Jean Marie Morgan survived the attack — at least for a while.
In April 2012, Ronald Lange Buchalla strangled her and struck her in the head with a pool cue. She lived. He pleaded guilty the following year to criminal attempt to commit murder and family-violence aggravated assault, and was sentenced to 30 years, 20 of them in prison. The case, by most measures, was closed.
Then Morgan died in 2015, from injuries prosecutors say she suffered in that 2012 attack. And the case cracked back open.
On Tuesday, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Buchalla can now stand trial for her murder — more than a decade after the assault, and more than ten years after her death. The court found that prosecuting him does not violate his constitutional protection against double jeopardy, because Morgan was still alive when he was first convicted. Murder requires proof of death. There was none in 2013.
“When an aggravated assault victim dies from his injuries after the defendant was convicted of aggravated assault, the State may then prosecute the same defendant for murder,” the court wrote, citing its own precedent stretching back to 1978.
The logic is straightforward, if unsettling in its implications: a crime that wasn’t yet complete cannot be prosecuted. Buchalla’s 2013 conviction covered what had happened up to that point. Morgan’s death changed the charge that was possible — and, the court found, the law allows prosecutors to follow that change wherever it leads.
Buchalla had argued that Georgia’s statutes requiring prosecutors to bring all related charges in a single proceeding should shield him from the new indictment. The court disagreed. Because Morgan’s death wasn’t known to prosecutors in 2013, those statutes simply didn’t apply.
Justice Pinson wrote the opinion. Presiding Justice Warren did not participate.
The case now returns to the Superior Court of Camden County, where Buchalla faces charges of malice murder and felony murder.
B.T. Clark is an award-winning journalist and the Publisher of The Georgia Sun. He has 25 years of experience in journalism and served as Managing Editor of Neighbor Newspapers in metro Atlanta for 15 years and Digital Director at Times-Journal Inc. for 8 years. His work has appeared in several newspapers throughout the state including Neighbor Newspapers, The Cherokee Tribune and The Marietta Daily Journal. He is a Georgia native and a fifth-generation Georgian.
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