On the evening of April 18, 2005, a maroon Ford Taurus crashed into a utility pole on Athens Avenue in Atlanta, Georgia. Jermane Jackson and J. D. Smoot saw the car hit the pole and later told the police they saw two men get out of the car and run away.
Smoot walked to the driver’s side of the car and saw 18-year-old Shah Walton shot in the head and slumped over the steering wheel. A few minutes before 10 p.m., Smoot and Jackson called 911.
After the police arrived, they discovered that Walton had 11 cents on him. No weapon was found in the car. His identification was found on the floor of the car. Police found a cell phone that was examined for fingerprints, but no usable prints were obtained.
Soot and stippling on Walton’s head indicated that he had been shot at close range from inside the car. When Walton was removed from the car, the police recovered a bullet inside the baseball cap that Walton was wearing.
After hearing about Walton’s murder, a teenager, M.G., called the police. She said that earlier that evening, she was by a Music Land store at the corner of Dill Avenue and Sylvan Road in Atlanta, which was less than a mile from where the Taurus crashed. She said she saw two young men outside the store, standing at the door of the Taurus. She said she knew Walton and the two men, whom she identified as 20-year-old Marquez Powell and 17-year-old Jacques Shockley. M.G. said she saw all three get into the car and leave. She said the car drove on Dill Avenue toward Athens Avenue with Shah behind the wheel, Shockley in the front passenger seat, and Powell in the back seat.
M.G. was shown a photographic lineup, and she selected Powell and Shockley as the two people she saw with Walton.
A month after the shooting, on May 18, 2005, Atlanta Police Detective Steve Balkcom interviewed Powell. During this interview, Powell said that he was not inside the car at the time of the shooting. Powell asserted that Shockley and another man he knew as “Dee” were in the car and that “Dee” was in the back seat.
On May 25, 2005, Balkcom confronted Powell with M.G.’s statement that he was at Music Land before the shooting. Powell said that he had been there, but it was earlier in the day.
On June 7, 2005, Balkcom interviewed Powell again. At that point, Powell admitted that he made up “Dee.” He said he had known Shockley for about a year from seeing him on the street but the two had never met before that night. Powell told police that he had been present when Shockley shot Shah. Powell also said that Shockley took the gun from the scene.
Based on this information, the police considered Powell a witness and, on June 9, 2005, obtained an arrest warrant for Shockley. By that time, Shockley had fled to New Jersey.
On September 16, 2005, a Fulton County grand jury indicted Powell. He was charged with malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. Ultimately, Shockley was arrested in New Jersey and extradited. He would go to trial separately after Powell went to trial.
A jury was selected in Powell’s trial in Fulton County Superior Court on September 22, 2008. During the opening statements, the prosecutor, Linda Dunikoski, said Shockley and Powell had acted “in concert,” though she did not know why.
The prosecution’s case relied in part on the testimony of M.G., that she had seen Shockley and Powell get in the car with Walton, as well as testimony from Smoot and Jackson, who said they had seen two men flee from the car after it struck the utility police. For the first time, Smoot said that he saw that Walton’s pants pocket had been “poked out, like someone [had] been in it.”
At that point, Dunikoski contended that the shooting was the aftermath of a robbery.
Balkcom was the state’s primary witness. He testified to the various iterations of Powell’s version of events. The prosecution contended that this was evidence of Powell’s consciousness of guilt.
A pathologist testified that Walton had been shot at close range.
Powell testified and denied shooting Walton. He said that he and Walton were “more than best friends” who had known each other since the sixth grade. At the time of the shooting, he said he and Walton were selling marijuana and splitting the proceeds.
On the day of the murder, Powell testified that he had about three ounces of marijuana on him when Walton arrived with Shockley to pick him up. Walton was driving and Shockley was seated in the front seat. Shockley offered him the front seat, but since he did not know Shockley well, he opted to sit behind Walton instead. He explained that he had learned on the street that he should not expose his back to someone he did not know or trust.
He said they drove around the area, making marijuana sales along the way. He said that just before the shooting, a potential buyer flagged him down, and he asked Walton to pull the vehicle over. Walton parked the car next to an alley while Powell got out to negotiate a price.
Powell said he then returned to the car to get the marijuana, leaving the door open as he left. Powell testified that he had seen the gun in Walton’s lap when they left the music store and that he thought it was for “safety.”
Powell said that after the sale, he returned to the car. When he got in, he saw Walton’s slumped body and realized that Shockley had shot him. He immediately jumped out of the car and watched as the car moved down the street before crashing into a pole. Powell hid in the bushes and saw Shockley get out and run away.
Powell said he then went to the car to confirm that he had just in fact witnessed his friend lying dead in the car. He then ran towards Marcus Beatles’s house because he felt it was a safe place at the time. He denied running “together” with Shockley, and said that while he was at Beatles’s place, Shockley tried to approach him and offered to talk, but he walked away and would not speak with him. Powell said he left when his sister came to pick him up.
Beatles testified and corroborated Powell’s testimony about his distraught mental state that night. Beatles said he was at home with friends when Powell ran through his yard and burst into his kitchen screaming, “Oh, man, oh, man, my boy got shot...There was nothing I could do.”
Beatles said that Powell continued to yell as he jumped up and down crying, with mucus “coming out of his nostrils.” Powell “collapsed,” and Beatles said he had to hold him up because Powell’s body was “limp” and he appeared “totally disoriented.”
After about half an hour of “walking around crazy,” Powell finally calmed down and told Beatles that he had just seen his best friend shot in the head. Afterwards, he sat in the back of Beatles’s house “in shock” until Powell’s sister, Sheneria, picked him up.
Sheneria testified that during the car ride, Powell was “hysterical,” cradling his head in his arms and kicking the dashboard. When they arrived at their mother's house, Powell jumped out of the car, slammed the door, and went straight to his room.
Sheneria, as well as Powell’s mother, Carrie Forte, testified that he was “upset” and “crying awfully hard” throughout the rest of that evening.
Both women testified that Powell and Walton had been close friends and they often shared meals together. They said there was no ill will or animosity between them.
During the closing arguments, Dunikoski argued that anyone involved in the robbery was criminally liable for the murder. She also told the jury, “Now, Detective Balkcom doesn’t make the decisions. He arrests people. And guess what the District Attorney’s Office does? If we think it’s a bad arrest, if we think there’s not enough evidence, what happens to that case? It goes. We don't bring it to indictment if we think the person is innocent, if there is not enough evidence. And the detective brings a case to us and says, you know, I got this warrant for this one guy, what do you think about it? [District Attorney] Paul Howard makes the charging decision and he says, you know what, you know who should decide, not the detective, not me. No. The right people to decide this case is you, the citizens of Fulton County, the people he has been elected to represent. That is why Marquez Powell was indicted.”
On September 24, 2008, the jury convicted Powell of all charges. He was sentenced to life in prison plus five years. Subsequently, Shockley was similarly convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
In 2012, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld Powell’s convictions and sentence, although the court said that the prosecution’s statement in closing argument was improper. The court noted that courts had correctly chastised prosecutors “for arguing or even suggesting that ‘the government only prosecutes guilty people.’” The court said, “This line of argument is forbidden because it implies that the prosecutor reached the determination that the defendant is guilty before trial and that the jury should weigh this fact in making its determination.”
However, the court said the defense had not objected at the time and that the prosecutor was responding to the defense closing argument. The defense had contended that the police had initially viewed Powell as a witness and speculated that the prosecution had decided to obtain indictments against both Shockley and Powell to avoid getting “caught up in a situation where everybody is pointing at each other.”
The court said that the defense had engaged in improper speculation that invited a response from the prosecution. “We conclude that, viewed in context, the improper remarks of the prosecuting attorney did not undermine the fundamental fairness of the trial.”
For more than a decade, Powell filed various motions seeking to vacate his conviction, but all were unsuccessful.
In 2022, the prosecution decided to send Walton’s jeans to a private DNA lab to conduct testing on the previously untested pockets, based on the prosecution’s trial theory that Walton’s pockets were emptied by his killer.
The results revealed that there were mixtures of DNA on both the left and right pocket of Walton’s jeans. In 2025, the same DNA lab that developed the DNA mixtures from the pockets of Walton’s jeans ran the data through STRmix, software that employs biological modeling and mathematical calculations to assign probabilities to the likelihood that a specific individual’s DNA profile is, or is not, included in a mixture.
The results for the right pocket showed that the evidence was 61 times more likely if DNA from someone other than from Powell was present, and that Shockley was eliminated. For the left pocket, the evidence was 4.3 times more likely if DNA from someone other than from Powell was present and 2.3 times more likely if the DNA came from Shockley than from another person.
Based on the results, Aimee Maxwell, the head of the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), and Christina Cribbs, attorney for the Georgia Innocence Project, filed a joint extraordinary motion for a new trial on May 14, 2026.
“The new DNA evidence is so material that it would probably produce a different verdict,” the motion said. “The newly discovered DNA results establish that Shockley’s DNA—not Powell’s—was on Walton’s inside-out left pocket, establishing that Powell did not participate in rifling through Walton’s pockets after he was shot. This was done by Shockley alone.”
The motion noted that Powell had not come forward initially for fear that Shockley would harm him, but that he did ultimately come forward at the urging of his family.
“By all accounts, Powell was completely distraught by Walton’s death and was hysterical, crying, and inconsolable for a significant period of time after witnessing the shooting,” the motion said.
On June 18, 2026, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rachelle Carnesale granted the motion. Powell’s convictions were vacated. The prosecution then dismissed the case, and Powell was released from prison, nearly 21 years from the date of his arrest.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 06-24-2026
