Background
On the night of July 14, 2022, Jazaylon Levy was shot and killed during a drive-by shooting in the parking lot of the Stone Bridge Apartment complex in Abbeville, Louisiana. The shooting occurred against a backdrop of longstanding gang rivalry: brothers Donald Briggs III and Stefan Briggs were affiliated with one group, while the victim’s companion that evening, Gavin Garnica, was affiliated with a rival group linked to Ronald Bernard III — a man suspected, though never formally confirmed, of having shot Stefan in two separate 2020 incidents. Police believed Garnica was staying at Stone Bridge, and the State’s theory was that the Briggs brothers targeted him for retaliation.
The State’s case rested on circumstantial evidence, principally surveillance footage. Video showed the brothers entering a Walmart adjacent to Stone Bridge at 9:15 p.m. without making a purchase, then driving toward the complex. A light-colored sedan consistent with their vehicle entered Stone Bridge, and nine to eleven minutes later the exit camera recorded ten gunshots. The sedan was then captured on video overtaking two vehicles as it fled the complex. Minutes later, footage from a Texaco station in nearby Delacambre showed Donald exiting the same Mercedes and transferring into his girlfriend’s Toyota Camry — visibly upset and speaking to himself — while Stefan took the wheel and drove away separately. Forensic testimony established that the fatal bullet struck Mr. Levy at approximately three to four feet above the ground, a trajectory consistent with a shot fired from the window of the defendants’ 2009 Mercedes-Benz C300 (windowsill height approximately 37 inches) but inconsistent with a Ford F-150 truck (windowsill height 52–57 inches) that also exited the complex after the shooting.
A unanimous jury convicted both brothers of second degree murder, and each received a mandatory life sentence at hard labor. On appeal, the Third Circuit Court of Appeal reversed, concluding the State had failed to negate every reasonable hypothesis of innocence under Louisiana’s circumstantial evidence rule, reasoning that jurors would have to speculate as to whether the shots were fired from the brothers’ vehicle rather than another car. The Louisiana Supreme Court granted the State’s writ to review the Third Circuit’s decision.
The Court’s Holding
The Louisiana Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Pro Tempore Penzato, reversed the court of appeal and reinstated both convictions and sentences. Applying the federal constitutional standard of Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (1979), the court held that a rational trier of fact could have found beyond a reasonable doubt — and to the exclusion of every reasonable hypothesis of innocence — that the Briggs brothers were guilty of second degree murder as principals. The court found that the jury reasonably drew the inference that the brothers drove to Stone Bridge, waited in a parking space for Garnica, executed a ten-shot drive-by, and immediately fled — a coherent narrative supported by the temporal sequence of surveillance footage, the physical evidence regarding bullet trajectory and vehicle windowsill heights, the brothers’ post-shooting conduct, and the established motive arising from the ongoing gang rivalry.
On the question of Donald Briggs’s specific intent — he was alleged only to have been the driver — the court held that intent could be inferred from the circumstances and that the doctrine of transferred intent applied: because the brothers deliberately aimed and fired at Garnica, they were criminally liable for the death of Mr. Levy even though he was not their intended target. The court further held that the court of appeal improperly acted as a “thirteenth juror” by substituting its own weighing of the evidence for the jury’s. The defense’s two alternative hypotheses — that the F-150’s occupants fired the shots, or that an unknown vehicle fired and then remained parked in the complex — had both been presented to and rejected by the jury on rational grounds supported by the record. The case was remanded to the Third Circuit to address the defendants’ pretermitted assignments of error.
Key Takeaways
- Appellate courts applying the Jackson v. Virginia sufficiency standard may not reweigh the evidence or substitute their judgment for the jury’s; the only question is whether any rational trier of fact could have found the elements proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
- Louisiana’s circumstantial evidence rule (La. R.S. 15:438), requiring exclusion of every reasonable hypothesis of innocence, does not impose a stricter standard than Jackson — it is a guide for jurors, and the jury’s reasonable rejection of the defense’s hypotheses will be upheld on review.
- A defendant who serves only as the getaway driver may be convicted as a principal to second degree murder if the evidence supports a finding that he shared the specific intent to kill or inflict great bodily harm.
- The transferred intent doctrine extends criminal liability for second degree murder to a defendant who intentionally fires at one person but kills another; deliberately firing a weapon at close range is sufficient to establish specific intent.
- Physical forensic evidence — here, bullet wound height correlated with vehicle windowsill measurements — can be decisive in negating a defendant’s identification hypothesis even in the absence of eyewitness testimony identifying the shooter.
Why It Matters
This decision reaffirms the Louisiana Supreme Court’s commitment to preserving jury verdicts in criminal cases built on circumstantial evidence. By reversing a unanimous jury conviction, the Third Circuit had raised the effective bar for sufficiency review beyond what Jackson v. Virginia permits, effectively requiring prosecutors to produce eyewitness testimony or direct evidence in drive-by shooting cases where, almost by definition, witnesses are scarce and identifications are difficult. The supreme court’s correction restores the proper appellate role: ensuring constitutional minimum due process, not re-trying the facts.
For practitioners, the case illustrates how meticulously documented surveillance timelines, forensic trajectory analysis, and post-crime conduct evidence can, in combination, sustain a conviction under the “exclude every reasonable hypothesis of innocence” standard even without a single eyewitness to the shooting itself. The two dissents — by Justices Griffin and Guidry — underscore that the evidentiary line between reasonable inference and impermissible speculation remains genuinely contested in drive-by shooting cases, signaling that sufficiency challenges in similar fact patterns will continue to be litigated at the appellate level.