Georgia Supreme Court upholds murder conviction in MARTA train shooting

ATLANTA — Chauncey Daniels will remain in prison for the rest of his life after Georgia’s Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld his murder conviction in a 2017 shooting on a MARTA train that killed one man and wounded three others.

What happened: On April 13, 2017, Daniels boarded an eastbound MARTA train and shot Zachariah Hunnicutt six times, killing him. Three other passengers were also shot and survived: Johnesia Cofield, Angel Bowens, and Ernest Butler. A MARTA police officer stopped Daniels as he tried to flee the station. Four passengers who were on the train identified Daniels as the shooter at trial.

Background: Daniels and Hunnicutt had worked at the same company. Daniels’s then-girlfriend testified that Hunnicutt had stayed with them for a couple of weeks in late 2016 and stole money, clothes, and other belongings when he left. Daniels was angry about the theft but told his girlfriend he did not want to hurt Hunnicutt. About five months later, the shooting happened.

The conviction: A Fulton County jury found Daniels guilty of murder and other charges in October 2018 after a five-day trial. The trial court sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder, plus 75 additional years for the other crimes.

The appeal: Daniels argued the trial judge should have told the jury it could consider a lesser charge — voluntary manslaughter, which applies when someone kills in the heat of sudden passion after being seriously provoked. He also argued his lawyer failed him by not pushing harder for that instruction and by not handling a separate legal issue about his prior criminal record.

The ruling: The court rejected all three arguments. On the manslaughter question, the justices said the evidence against Daniels was strong — surveillance video and witnesses showed he boarded the train armed, waited, and then chased Hunnicutt as he tried to run. The court also noted the theft had happened five months before the shooting, which was long enough that a jury would likely have found Daniels had time to cool down. On the lawyer question, the court said it was a reasonable legal strategy to focus on arguing Daniels was the wrong man rather than also arguing he acted in sudden passion, since the two defenses contradict each other.

The sentence stands: Daniels will serve life in prison without parole plus 75 years. The ruling was unanimous, with one justice concurring only in the outcome on the manslaughter issue.