Trial for quadruple homicide unlikely until 2024

Family members packed into the small hearing room at Polk County Courthouse No. 1 while attorneys and judges called in on Zoom for an hourlong status hearing to determine where the case stands for the State of Georgia vs. Daylon Delon Gamble.

Gamble is charged in the quadruple homicide and shooting of a fifth victim back in January 2019, and based on where the case stands currently it’ll be at least another year before the victim’s family will potentially see justice.

Tallapoosa Circuit Chief Judge Mark Murphy gathered attorneys for the state and from Gamble’s team on the Capital Defenders Office on Friday, January 27 for a status hearing on where the case stands after he took over proceedings last year.

When Gamble was arrested and initially arraigned, former Superior Court Judge Meng Lim was in charge of the case. After going through the record of what happened up until May 2022, Murphy found some issues with the record provided and wanted some clarification from each side on what has happened previously.

One of the issues is the changing of Gamble’s defense team. He was initially represented by Samuel Rael, and when District Attorney Jack Browning announced his intentions to seek the death penalty for the quadruple homicide, the case went onward to the Capital Defenders office.

Since the Capital Defenders took over, several attorneys have represented Gamble, and a question of whether all the requirements for following the Unified Appeal Procedure (UAP) in capital cases was raised by Murphy since a record was not included in the case file that Judge Lim had gone through all the necessary steps.

Attorneys recalled a early 2022 hearing (they were unsure if it was in late February or late March) where these issues were raised, but a record wasn’t made available via transcript to either the prosecution or defense.

In fact, transcripts from previous hearings in 2022 seem to be missing completely from the case file. Murphy noted this lack of transcripts as the main reason he wanted to gather for the status hearing, and to ensure the UAP was being followed exactly as laid out by law since there was an incomplete case file without the transcripts.

Other issues were laid out as well, including a lack of any decisions on pending motions (at least two dozen) and that a recusal motion had been put before the court when Judge Lim was presiding over the case since he apparently had previously known one of the victims. Additionally, some of the motions over evidence were cleared up when the defense and prosecution worked together to access Georgia Bureau of Investigation files on the case which caused technical issues for the defense.

However, his July 2022 resignation and the reassignment of the case first to Judge Andrew Roper after his appointment by Governor Brian Kemp in August, then to Judge Murphy in September, made this filing a moot point.

Judge Murphy did ensure that Gamble had no objections to his defense or their work thus far as well.

The other reason why Judge Murphy called the hearing was to see what progress might be made this year toward getting a trial date set. When hearing that it will be sometime in 2024 before Gamble is brought into a courtroom, those attending the hearing representing victims groaned.

Gamble – alleged to have shot and killed his aunt Helen Rose Mitchell, 48, a cousin, Jaequnn Davis, 19, and two others, 24-year-old Arkeyla Perry and 26-year-old Dadrian Cummings – has been incarcerated since early 2019 in the days following the two double homicides. He also is accused of shooting and injuring Peerless Brown during the spree that began on Williamson Street in Rockmart, and ended when he fled the scene on Rome Street.

Following the shooting in January 2019, Gamble was on the run for three days before he was found in Indianapolis and brought back to Georgia and has been in jail ever since without bond.

The hearing on Friday ended without any clear date for when a trial will be set. A confidential ex-parte hearing was then started after the courtroom was cleared of the public and continued on Zoom.