Judge's gavel

MOULTRIE, Ga. — A Colquitt County jury took less than an hour Friday to find Thomas Lee “Squeeze” Tyler not guilty in the shooting death of Shvensky Collins.

Collins, 25, also known as “Tadpole,” was shot four times in the back around midnight May 8, 2017, in the yard of a residence in the 400 block of Seventh Street Southwest. Tyler was charged May 25, 2017.

He faced charges of malice murder, aggravated assault, felony murder and three counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. The jury found him not guilty on all of the charges.

The jury was selected on Monday, Nov. 14, but the trial didn’t start until the following Wednesday. After two days of testimony, jurors heard one last defense witness on Friday morning, then the defense and state made closing arguments. Superior Court Judge Gregory Voyles charged the jury then released them for lunch about 12:45 p.m. They returned approximately 2 p.m. to begin deliberations and notified the court that they had a verdict at 2:43 p.m.

An eyewitness (maybe)

If the prosecution had a star witness, it was Gerwarney Fleming, who claimed to have seen Tyler shooting something in the yard, although he could not see what his target was.

Fleming testified that he was inside the house prior to the shooting. He said he stepped onto the porch to retrieve his beer when he saw Tyler crossing the yard. Tyler’s mother lived across the street and Fleming knew Tyler well, so he thought Tyler was coming to join them in the house. He said he bent down to pick up his beer and heard Tyler say, “Naw!” Then he said he heard a shot, so he ducked low on the porch. He said Tyler had his hand extended with a gun pointed at someone, but an oak tree blocked Fleming’s line of sight so he couldn’t see who it was. A second shot rang out, and Fleming said he jumped up and dashed into the house. More shots were heard.

“I said, ‘Man, that’s Squeeze shooting!” Fleming said he told the others in the house.

He said the people in the house waited three or four minutes to make sure the shooting had stopped then went out. Collins’ mother was the first person out the door, so she was the first one to realize it was her son who’d been shot.

Fleming said he went to the house next door — where his cousin, Willie Palmore, lives — and told him to call 911. He said Palmore told him to stay and tell the police what he saw, but Fleming said he told him he didn’t want to be involved and he left.

The next day Fleming found out the police were looking for him, so he went to the police department and told them about seeing Thomas shooting and finding Collins shot.

Defense attorney Julius Collins cast some doubt upon Fleming’s description of events because of the lighting in the area. Some crime scene photographs by Klay Luke, a GBI crime scene specialist who testified on Wednesday, were very dark, and multiple witnesses agreed that the area was inconsistently lit by streetlights.

Fleming insisted there was a “pole light” nearby that allowed him to see Thomas, and the prosecution showed other photos that Luke took that night that showed street lamps, although no one could say whether they were on at the time of the shooting.

Changing his story

The case dragged on. Fleming moved to Florida then at some point moved back to Moultrie. After that — in September 2020 — he had an encounter with Julius Collins, Tyler’s defense attorney.

Fleming said he was visiting his cousin, who asked him to ride to the store with him and he agreed. His cousin didn’t drive straight to the store, though. He said he had to make a stop first, and that stop was at Tyler’s mother’s house. Fleming said Tyler was in the yard on the phone. When they got out, he said, Tyler told him his attorney wanted to talk with him and handed him the phone.

Fleming said he was scared and told the attorney he had lied about Tyler shooting Collins. He said Tyler had purchased Fleming’s father’s house and had promised to give Fleming the money but had given it to his brother instead — which, according to other points in his testimony, was apparently true — but he told the attorney he had lied about the shooting because he was mad at Tyler over that money.

Fleming said two women he didn’t know picked him up the next day and took him to the attorney’s Atlanta office. Fleming went willingly. In the office, Fleming told him he’d been smoking crack cocaine earlier the day of the shooting — which his testimony Wednesday indicated was also true. He signed an affidavit that said he’d lied to police about seeing Tyler do the shooting.

After a joint meeting with the defense and prosecuting attorneys and the DA’s victims advocate, Fleming changed his story back to what he’d said originally — that he had seen Thomas shooting and they later found the victim was Shvensky Collins.

“The document you signed in his office, was it the truth or a lie?” prosecutor Ken Still asked Fleming on the witness stand Wednesday.

“It was a lie,” Fleming said.

“Why’d you do that?”

“Because I was scared.”

Julius Collins was unconvinced. Under his cross-examination, Fleming agreed he was not threatened or paid to change his story, and he wasn’t threatened, paid or coerced to go to Atlanta to meet with him.

“Why would you ride to Atlanta with unknown parties if you were afraid?” the attorney asked him.

Fleming said he wasn’t afraid on the ride because Collins had invited him to come.

During his testimony, Fleming said he met alone with the attorney, he was not sworn in and when Collins produced a paper stating the things they’d talked about, he encouraged him to sign it without reading it.

Collins responded to Fleming’s testimony in three ways. First, with the jury out of the courtroom, he denied the allegations of unethical conduct before Judge Voyles.

“This court does not believe you have done anything improper,” Voyles assured him.

Collins then hammered the point to Fleming on the stand with the jury present, getting him to read the affidavit aloud and confirming that everything in it was what Fleming had told him that day in his office. His questioning couldn’t get him to change his testimony that the two had met alone, however.

On Thursday afternoon, after the state had rested, Collins returned to Fleming’s description of their meeting by calling Jacqueline Lee to the stand.

Lee said she was the driver who took Fleming to Atlanta. She asked a friend to ride with her so she wouldn’t be alone with him on the trip. She said she didn’t interact much with him; mostly she and her friend talked in the front seat while Fleming was in the back — which is consistent with what Fleming said the day before.

Lee is Tyler’s former girlfriend and they share two children together, ages 4 and 2. She said Tyler asked her to pick Fleming up and take him to the attorney’s office.

She said she was with Fleming the whole time he was meeting with Julius Collins, so he was not alone there as he had said.

Fleming said he was never sworn by a notary. Lee said he was. Lee said she saw Fleming read the document before he signed it.

She affirmed that neither she nor anyone she was aware of had threatened Fleming or paid him to change his story and she said he never mentioned to her about being afraid of Tyler.

She said the attorney told Fleming he could get in trouble for changing his story — which Fleming had also acknowledged in his testimony — but she said Fleming said he “just wanted to do the right thing.”

Changing back

For whatever reason, Fleming’s testimony on Wednesday was in line with what he had initially told police, not what he signed to at Collins’ office.

Prosecutor Ken Still claimed it was because that was the truth all along and he’s only wavered because he was afraid of Tyler.

Defense attorney Julius Collins said Fleming misidentified the gunman in the dark because he was impaired by alcohol and drugs. He told multiple people that he saw what he thought he had seen, and that rumor began to travel the neighborhood. Fleming was slow to realize his mistake because of his bias against Tyler over the sale of his father’s house, Collins said, but eventually his conscience worked on him enough that he told the truth in Atlanta.

However, Fleming is related to the family of Shvensky Collins, the attorney said, and they had a lot of emotion invested in Tyler being guilty. They shut Fleming out because they thought he’d changed his story for money, which Fleming said was not true. To get back in their good graces, Julius Collins argued, Fleming changed his story back.

Hearsay evidence

The trial’s start was delayed Wednesday morning as the judge and attorneys discussed whether to include statements that witnesses said the victim made to them in the weeks before the shooting.

Sheila Collins, the victim’s mother; Sebrena Collins Robinson, his aunt and one-time guardian; and Willie Palmore Jr., his cousin, each testified in the hearing that Collins had told them Thomas had threatened to kill him. Each said he’d been making those statements three weeks or more before his shooting.

All three said Collins never told them what caused the conflict between Thomas and him, and the lack of that context was a point raised by defense attorney Julius Collins.

Typically, rules of evidence don’t allow a witness to say what someone told them about an event they didn’t see or experience themselves; it’s called hearsay. But the law does allow an exception: When the person who did witness the event is deceased, a witness can testify to what the deceased person told them about the event if the situation meets certain other requirements. Since Shvensky Collins couldn’t tell jurors that Thomas had threatened him, prosecutor Ken Still argued his surviving family members should be able to say that Collins told them that Thomas had threatened him.

Judge Voyles agreed and those statements were allowed when Robinson testified later on Wednesday and when Collins and Palmore testified on Thursday. Similarly, the judge allowed Collins and Robinson to state what they said Shvensky Collins told them as he lay dying.

Sheila Collins, who was inside the residence when the shots were fired outside, testified that Gerwarney Fleming had told them that Tyler was shooting. When she went out of the house to see what was going on, she found her son bleeding and struggling to breathe near the porch. She said she got down beside him and asked, “Did Squeeze do this?” and she said he gasped out, “Yeah.”

Collins left her son to get her boyfriend, Marvin Wilcher, who was asleep at their home a few houses away. She also called her sister, Sebrena Collins Robinson, who lived about four blocks away.

Robinson testified she ran all the way to the crime scene when she got the call. She said no one was tending to Shvensky Collins when she got there but a crowd had gathered and she urged them back. She got on the ground beside him and asked, “Who did this to you?”

Robinson told GBI Agent Zach Johnson the next day that she’d heard Collins say something. She thought it was “Squeeze. Squeeze,” which is Tyler’s nickname, but she acknowledged it might have been “I can’t breathe.”

Defense attorney Julius Collins brought up this uncertainty with Johnson when the GBI agent testified on Thursday. Johnson said he reviewed the recording of that interview in preparation for the trial, and while Robinson was unsure at the start what Shvensky Collins had said, he said the more she thought about it, the more adamant she became that he’d said, “Squeeze. Squeeze.”

The defense continued to challenge her version of events, though, as both Wilcher and a neighbor, Jamal Lee, testified that no one was tending to the wounded man when they arrived and that only the two of them tended to him until the ambulance arrived. Both said they didn’t hear him say anything, and the defense sought to use their testimony to show there was no opportunity for Robinson to hear what she said she heard.

Physical evidence

After the state rested about 2:30 p.m. Thursday, defense attorney Julius Collins moved for a directed verdict of not guilty. He said the state had failed to prove the case against Tyler because of a lack of physical evidence tying him to the crime.

Judge Voyles ruled the testimonial evidence was sufficient to let the jury decide the case.

Much of the state’s physical evidence was presented on Wednesday when crime scene investigator Klay Luke testified, but it was the testimony of GBI Agent Zach Johnson and expert witnesses on Thursday that showed how it was relevant.

Johnson discussed the autopsy report, which showed Collins had been shot four times in the back, buttocks and upper legs. All the entry wounds were from the rear, he said, and exit wounds were generally on the front of the body.

“In layman’s terms he was shot four times in the back?” prosecutor Ken Still asked.

“Yes, sir,” Johnson answered.

Two cell phones were confiscated from Tyler sometime after the shooting, and call logs were extracted from them by Lisa Maxwell, a digital forensics expert with the Thomasville Police Department. Maxwell testified about how the information was retrieved from the phones, but she said she is not involved in assessing the contents themselves. It’s up to the investigator to take the information she prints out and to determine what of it is relevant to the case.

Based on the reports Maxwell gave him, Johnson said a couple of things caught his attention. On the older phone, there was quite a bit of activity until about the time of the shooting. After that, no outgoing calls were made and approximately 41 incoming calls went unanswered. The newer phone’s log contained text messages consistent with activation the day after the shooting.

In closing arguments, prosecutor Ken Still pointed to the suspicious lack of activity immediately after the shooting. Four of the unanswered calls were from Tyler’s mother and two from his sister, he said.

The defense attorney told jurors that not answering your phone is not a crime.

Jordan Schmitz, a DNA analyst with the GBI, testified that eight pieces of evidence were checked for possible DNA. None could be linked to Tyler.

Two of the pieces of evidence were submitted for advanced testing with software called True Allele that had the potential to identify DNA that was too low-level or too complex for standard procedures. It yielded no additional information, but attorney Collins questioned Johnson why other evidence was not submitted for the advanced test because it might have eliminated his client as a suspect.

Johnson said it’s partly a cost issue and partly that investigators didn’t expect a useful result.

“We have to articulate and justify any request [for a test],” he said. He said investigators looked at the facts of the case and saw no reason to ask for it. In fact, they did not initially seek True Allele testing on any of the evidence but decided to ask for it on two items as they were preparing for trial earlier this year, just to cover their bases.

The defense attorney also noted that investigators did not search Tyler’s house or the house of his mother, who lives across the street from where Collins was shot. Johnson — who appeared to be speaking in general, not necessarily about this specific case — said investigators must have probable cause to seek a search warrant, a process that might take many days; by then any incriminating evidence that might have been there has been removed. Officers charged Tyler 17 days after the shooting.