Photo Credit: Columbus Ledger – Enquirer

A Hays State Prison inmate lost an appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court last week.  Jerry Wayne “Scarface” Merritt is serving a sentence of life without parole at the prison in Trion.

Jerry Wayne “Scarface” Merritt claimed he was so regularly bullied and beaten by Anthony Taylor that he felt his life was in danger the morning of June 6, 2014, when he ambushed Taylor outside a Fort Benning Road gas station, chased him down and shot him dead with a .32-caliber pistol.

But a Columbus jury rejected the defense that Merritt suffered from a sort of “battered person” syndrome that drove him to kill Taylor hours after the two had a confrontation at the Pure Gas Station where they regularly hung out. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Now the Georgia Supreme Court has upheld that verdict and sentence, rejecting Merritt’s arguments that his defense was ineffective and the trial judge erred by allowing a prosecutor to ask leading questions, and by not instructing the jury on the option of finding Merritt guilty of the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter.

Read more from The Columbus Ledger – Enquirer