‘His life was taken for nothing’: Georgia court rejects appeal in Columbus murder

Before he died a bedridden paraplegic with four bullets still lodged in his body, Calvin “Teddy” Grimes begged his mother to forgive the two men who gunned him down outside a Columbus apartment building.

One of his killers was not as conscientious.

After Grimes died on June 26, 2011, Joshua Leonard took the autopsy photos he got as evidence in the murder case against him, posted one in his jail cell and showed others to his cellmates, bragging about what he had done to Grimes.

That detail is included in Wednesday’s Georgia Supreme Court decision rejecting Leonard’s appeal of his murder conviction, which resulted in a life sentence for him and for codefendant Jarvis Alexander, a longtime friend of Grimes’ who was so close to the victim that Grimes treated him like a brother. Alexander did not join in Leonard’s appeal.

The two men shot Grimes repeatedly on Aug. 19, 2010, outside the Fourth Street Towers at 543 Third Ave. That’s where Grimes parked his 2006 Chrysler 300 after giving Leonard and Alexander a ride to the Little Joe’s liquor store across the street.

It was around 10 p.m. when Leonard got out of the front passenger seat and shot Grimes with a .40-caliber pistol. The wounded driver turned to Alexander for help. Sitting in the back seat, Alexander told him, “I got to do it,” pulled out a gun, fired repeatedly and ran.

Police found Grimes in the driver’s seat with the car still running and in gear, and Grimes’ foot on the brake. Officers found 11 shell casings, eight of them .22 caliber and three .40 caliber.

As he later showed cellmates Grimes’ autopsy photos, Leonard told them he preferred a .40-caliber, witnesses said.

Grimes did not regain consciousness for months. When he came to, he could not speak, but he could make clicking noises with his mouth.

Detective Wayne Fairburn used a printed alphabet for identifying Grimes’ assailants, pointing to letters until Grimes clicked to spell out their names. Police called it the “click-click case.”

Because Grimes was dead by the time the case went to trial in October 2014, attorneys sparred over whether his identifying his killers was admissible, as he was not there to testify. Judge William Rumer admitted the statements as a “dying declaration,” meaning Grimes was conscious of his impending death when he made them.

Leonard’s appeal argued those statements should not have been allowed. He also claimed his defense was weakened by the long delay between his arrest in July 2011 and the trial in 2014, despite his speedy trial demand in February 2013.

The Supreme Court backed Rumer’s decision on Grimes’ dying declaration. It said the delay could have damaged Leonard’s defense at trial, but not to the extent that the jury would have reached a different verdict. The high court unanimously affirmed his conviction and life sentence.

Leonard is being held in the Telfair State Prison near McRae-Helena, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections. Alexander is in the Wheeler Correctional Facility in Alamo.

What was behind the slaying?

Why did Leonard and Alexander kill Grimes?

Because they thought he had cooperated with authorities in a homicide investigation involving Leonard’s cousin, making him a “snitch,” investigators said.

When he was 16, Grimes was implicated in the Aug. 8, 2007, fatal shooting of Ronald Burrous of Box Springs, Ga., and the man convicted in that case, Melvin “Big Teddy” Williams, assumed Grimes fed police information. Williams was sentenced to 15 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter,

Leonard wanted Grimes to pay for that, and later bragged about his success. “This is what a snitch looks like.... This is what happened to him,” he told his cellmates in jail, displaying the autopsy photos.

His suspicions were unfounded, Grimes’ mother said after the trial: Her son never testified against Williams in Burrous’ 2007 shooting, nor cooperated with police investigating it.

Grimes never knew why his longtime friend Alexander betrayed him, and that aggravated his suffering, said mother Judy Grimes: “Calvin didn’t know, and it hurt him so bad.”

Grimes was 19 when he was shot, and 20 when he died. When they shot him in 2010, Leonard was 18, and Alexander was 19.

Before they were sent to prison on a sentence of life with possible parole, for which Georgia inmates typically serve at least 30 years, Judy Grimes said she hoped others would learn from what happened to her son:

“Calvin was my only child, and his life was taken for nothing,” she said.