Georgia Appeals Court Defines Defacement of Government Property

Coweta Superior Court convicted a defendant of three counts of making terroristic threats and one count of interference with government property that arose from several confrontations with Coweta County jail detention officers. The defendant believed that the evidence was insufficient to support the convictions because he claimed that the detention officers initiated the conflicts. He further explained that his threats were made after being restrained and rendered incapable of performing those threats, and that two of the three threats were conditional. He also claimed that he was unstable and unable to understand the consequences of his actions. As for the interference with government property conviction, the defendant explained that because he cleaned his fecal material from his cell and a security camera, then the property was not “destroy[ed], damage[d], or deface[d]” as determined by the statute.

Georgia’s Court of Appeals reviewed the defendant’s case and noted that the jury determined that he did threaten the officers with the intention of terrorizing them in spite of being restrained. In the government property matter, the Court, using the definition of deface, determined that “the appearance of a thing may be impaired permanently or temporarily,” so its ability to be cleaned has no bearing. The Appeals Court supported the convictions made by the trial court.