Convicted of killing his sister at 16, a Columbus man now faces a second murder trial

Michael Edward Simmons has spent most of his life in prison, and a Columbus jury this week will decide whether he goes back.

He is 61 years old, and has been jailed or imprisoned for 42 of those years. He grew up in the Oakland Park neighborhood off South Lumpkin Road, where at age 16 he was charged with killing a sibling, in 1978.

He served almost 40 years, and returned to his Wise Street home upon his release, in 2018. He’s now on trial for murder in another homicide in that neighborhood.

He’s accused of fatally beating Christopher Williams at the Blan Street home of a woman Simmons used to date.

Williams, 55, died from bleeding in his brain days after the altercation on Oct. 13, 2022. Simmons was arrested after an autopsy revealed the injury resulted from blunt-force trauma.

Simmons is charged with malice or intentional murder, of felony murder for causing Williams’ death while committing the felony of aggravated assault, and of aggravated assault.

If convicted, he will spend the rest of his life in prison.

‘He was out cold’

During opening statements Tuesday, prosecutor Anthony Pickett told jurors Simmons had dated a woman named Effie Martin.

They had broken up two years earlier, yet Simmons continued to pursue her, Pickett said.

Martin had a daughter to whom Williams was engaged. When the daughter went to a recovery center for a drug addiction, Williams started staying with Martin, keeping her company and occasionally letting her borrow his truck, the prosecutor said.

Simmons went to Martin’s home around dusk and banged on the door, but she was in bed and did not answer. He then went to her window and knocked on it.

Williams arrived there from work as Simmons came around the house from the window. Martin told police she heard Williams tell him, “I’m not going to wake her up. That’s disrespectful,” Pickett said.

As Williams moved to enter the house, Simmons tried to push past him, and a struggle followed. Simmons punched Williams in the face so hard that “he was out cold,” Pickett said.

As Williams lay on the ground, Simmons hit him three more times as Martin tried to pull him away, the prosecutor said. Simmons went back to his car, yelling at them, he said.

Williams regained consciousness, but complained of headaches for days afterward, finding bright light painful and staying in his room in the dark.

On Oct. 18, Martin fed him some soup, but he threw up and went to bed, Pickett said. Later Martin heard a noise, and asked Williams whether he was OK.

“I’m fine, mom,” he replied, and those were his last words. She found his body in the bedroom.

Simmons was arrested the following Nov. 4, after police got the autopsy results. He has spent a year in jail awaiting trial.

Defense attorney Anthony Johnson told the jury Simmons was not threatening or boisterous at Martin’s home, and had merely asked Williams whether Martin was OK, when she didn’t come to the door.

He said Williams attacked Simmons first, putting both hands on Simmons’ neck and choking him, forcing Simmons to punch him to defend himself.

Police took photos documenting the injuries to Simmons’ neck, Johnson said. Jurors will see those images, and hear a medical examiner testify to Williams’ precise cause of death, he said, urging them to pay particular attention to that testimony.

Sister raped, drowned

Simmons was convicted of raping and drowning his 7-year-old half-sister Dawn Worth in 1978.

In a unanimous 1999 decision upholding Simmons’ convictions for rape and murder, the Georgia Supreme Court recounted the evidence from his trial:

The girl was reported missing on the morning of April 21, 1978, when Simmons was supposed to have escorted the child on her walk to school.

Three days later, her body was found floating in what the court called a “lake,” just a fifth of a mile from her Wise Street home. Her hands were tied behind her back, and she had been raped. An autopsy determined her cause of death was drowning.

Then-District Attorney Bill Smith, now a senior Superior Court judge, said the “lake” referenced by the Supreme Court was a pit dug either for sand mining or an old city landfill.

Police retracing the little girl’s movements learned witnesses saw her walking down the street at 8:30 a.m., when a classmate spoke with her.

Search parties joined by soldiers from Fort Benning scoured the area before the body was discovered April 24.

Questioned the next day, Simmons told police he had helped Dawn get dressed for school and sent her on her way.

But during his trial in October 1979, an aunt testified that she overheard Simmons tell his mother he had tried to make Dawn go to school, but she followed him to the pit, where he tied her arms behind her back and put her in the water while they were playing.

Convicted of rape and malice or intentional murder, Simmons served 39 years and one month in prison. He was freed on May 9, 2018, and released to the same Wise Street home where he lived as a teen, according to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles.