ATLANTA — Two of the three then-teenagers convicted in the 2019 killing of Hall County Sheriff's Deputy Blane Dixon have had the appeals of their murder convictions rejected by the Georgia Supreme Court.
In an opinion released Tuesday and authored by Justice Shawn Ellen LaGrua, the Court said of arguments that had been brought by Clements: "We see no merit to these claims."
According to a summary released by the state Supreme Court, Clements and Velazquez had made separate arguments. Clements tried to claim, among other arguments, that his murder conviction could not be upheld because "it was not reasonably foreseeable that someone could be killed as the result of a conspiracy to commit burglaries, particularly burglaries of unoccupied businesses."
According to the summary, Justice LaGrua noted that Clements was traveling in a stolen car, wearing a mask, gloves and dark clothing and carrying a loaded firearm at the time the killing occurred.
"Under these circumstances, it was reasonably foreseeable that Clements and his co-conspirators could encounter law enforcement and that someone could be killed during the commission of these crimes,” LaGrua wrote.
Deputy Dixon was shot and killed after trying to stop the stolen car that he believed was tied to burglaries, with a chase and shootout ensuing. Clements, Velazquez and a third defendant, Hector Garcia-Solis, were all convicted in 2021 in the case.
Velazquez had also argued evidence against him was insufficient because "there was no evidence to show that he or the other co-defendants had a plan to shoot someone or that Velazquez knew one of his co-defendants was going to shoot Deputy Dixon," according to the summary, and that further "the had abandoned any criminal intent when he ran and tried to hide after he crashed the getaway car."
Justice LaGrua wrote that he was charged as a party to the crime, and as such "the State did not need to prove that Velazquez fatally shot Deputy Dixon — ‘it was enough to prove that he was a party to the crime.'"
Several additional arguments made by Velazquez and Clements were also rejected in the opinion, which you can find in full here.
All three convicted in the killing of Deputy Dixon were given a life sentence in prison.
Dixon had a wife and two sons, including an infant who was just three months old at the time of the murder.