Guilty verdicts in a Jones County 2001 murder case were recently upheld by the Georgia Supreme Court.

Darrell Thomas Collum was convicted for malice murder, two counts of felony murder, and cruelty to children in the first degree in September of 2001 and sentenced to three concurrent terms of life imprisonment and a consecutive 20-year term.

Before appealing to the Supreme Court, Collum filed a motion for a new trial in October of 2001, which was denied in December of 2003. The appeal to the Supreme Court was docketed August 1, 2006, and oral arguments were heard January 9.

The Supreme Court’s judgment was decided February 19 and was received by the District Attorney’s office March 16. The opinion affirmed Collum’s convictions, and all the justices concurred.

Collum and Tammie Lynn Rhodes were tried together and each charged with one count of malice murder, two counts of felony murder, and one count of cruelty to children in the first degree in the death of 20-month-old Jacob Rhodes.

The jury found the individual defendants guilty on every charge except for the charge of malice murder. Collum was pronounced guilty of that charge, but Rhodes was found not guilty of malice murder.

Rhodes and Collum were officially charged on January 11, 2001, with the murder of Jacob, the youngest son of Rhodes, four days after his death on January 7 from blunt force head trauma. The trial began on Monday, September 24, and was six days in duration. The state presented 38 witnesses out of a possible 90 on its witness list and introduced more than 100 items of evidence during its portion of the proceeding.

The Supreme Court opinion noted relevant facts in the case, stating that Rhodes and her three sons moved in with Collum in November of 2000. The couple met over the internet and had known each other a short time, and within days of moving into Collum’s home, Jacob Rhodes started receiving bruises to his head and body.

The day before he died, Jacob was seen with injuries so severe that at least one witness demanded the child be taken to a doctor, but the defendants refused. The medical examiner testified that Jacob had been brutally beaten and ultimately died of blunt force trauma to the head.

The justices concluded that the evidence presented in the case was sufficient for jurors to find Collum guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

In his appeal, Collum contended that he should have been tried apart from Tammie Rhodes, and that the court erred by denying his motions for a mistrial, allowing similar transaction testimony, and denying his motion for a continuance after receiving amended witness lists. The opinion found no error by the trial court concerning those objections.

As a point of law, however, the opinion vacated Collum’s three life sentences and ordered him remanded for re-sentencing.

The judgment stated that because there was a single victim in the crime, the court erred by sentencing Collum to multiple life terms. The law does not preclude guilty verdicts for both malice and felony murder, but when there is a single victim, the defendant may be sentenced on either but not both.

The Georgia Supreme Court appeal by Rhodes resulted in the same re-sentencing decision and the prosecutor conceded the point in both appeals. Rhodes was re-sentenced April 20, 2006, and is serving the same amount of time because the life sentences were originally ordered to run concurrently.

The additional 20-year cruelty to children term that was ordered to run consecutive with the life sentences for each defendant was not changed.