Jamichael Mayes

Muscogee County, GA | October 7, 2001

For over 24 years, Jamichael Mayes has been imprisoned for an armed robbery he did not commit. His wrongful conviction resulted from eyewitness misidentification and prosecutorial misconduct involving two witnesses. Intentionally concealed by the State for decades, evidence of multiple instances of prosecutorial misconduct was revealed when Georgia Innocence Project reviewed the State's file in person. But Jamichael's plea for freedom based on this new evidence was denied by a habeas court.

Georgia Innocence Project and co-counsel Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough and Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein filed an application for certificate of probable cause, requesting permission to appeal the denial. That application is pending in the Georgia Supreme Court. 

CRIME

Midday on October 7, 2001, Tirus Parnell went to a trailer home in Muscogee County where the victims, CD and NC, were living with their young children. As NC answered the door to greet Parnell, a second man appeared and demanded entry with a firearm. Parnell and the man with the gun forced their way inside, pointed the firearm at all occupants, and stole money off the counter. The two men then fled in a white vehicle driven by a third man.

HH, the victims’ neighbor, recognized the third man driving the getaway car as Darron Snipes. Descriptions of the other two robbers were obtained from NC. She described the man without the gun as 5’5”, 200lbs and the man with the gun as 5’4”, 110lbs. Police eventually found the getaway car, which was owned by Parnell’s girlfriend. The car had numerous fingerprints, several matching Snipes and Parnell, several more that were unidentified, and one matching Jamichael Mayes. Both victims were then shown two photographic lineups and from those lineups, picked out Mayes and Parnell. As a result, Snipes (based on HH’s identification), and Mayes and Parnell (based on both victims’ identification), were all arrested and indicted for armed robbery and related charges.

TRIAL

NC and CD testified that Parnell was the suspect without a gun, and that Mayes was the suspect with a gun. But NC—reportedly 5’3.5” tall—noted that Mayes—who is 6’—was significantly taller than the 5’4” description she gave for the gunman.

At trial, HH again identified Snipes as the getaway driver but for the first time, said that he saw a man in the back-passenger seat of the getaway car, who he identified as Mayes. Although HH was facing incarceration on unrelated drug charges, he repeatedly denied receiving any plea offers in exchange for his testimony. The State also called BP who testified that he came into contact with Mayes, Snipes, and Parnell in a holding cell at the jail, after the three were arrested for the armed robbery. BP testified he overheard Mayes talking about being in the back-passenger seat of a vehicle during a robbery of a trailer. BP repeatedly testified he was not offered anything in exchange for his testimony.

Mayes presented three alibi witnesses—a Division of Family and Child Services worker, store manager, and former Army soldier—who each testified that Mayes was at their shared apartment all day on the day of the noon-time robbery. Mayes also testified, denying any involvement in the robbery and confirming that he was at his friends’ apartment for the entire morning and afternoon. Mayes told the jury that he accepted a ride from Parnell and another man at around 9:00pm, approximately 9 hours after the robbery concluded. Mayes also presented the testimony of RC, who testified that he overheard Parnell stating that Mayes had nothing to do with the robbery while the two were waiting for a court proceeding to begin.

AFTER TRIAL

After testifying against Mayes, HH received a sentence of four years’ probation—instead of the 35-years he was facing as a recidivist—and was immediately released from custody. Although BP had been sentenced to three years in prison before Mayes’s trial, the State agreed—in light of BP’s testimony against Mayes—to undo that sentence. BP was also immediately released from custody.

Shortly after trial, Snipes told Mayes's trial counsel that TE—not Mayes—was the gunman. But this information was excluded from court during Mayes's appeal.

HABEAS CORPUS PETITION

In 2023, Mayes’s legal team, Nelson Mullins and Georgia Innocence Project, discovered the undisclosed plea agreements. The State failed its obligation to share the plea agreements with Mayes’s attorneys. Plus, the State let their witnesses say there were no deals (which was not true). These are constitutional violations and to fix them, a habeas petition must be filed. 

Based on the discoveries of the above violations, Mayes filed his Habeas Corpus Petition on July 19, 2024. The Petition raised four separate claims, alleging the State violated his constitutional rights by withholding plea offers extended to the State’s two witnesses and knowingly letting them lie on the stand.

The Georgia Attorney General’s Office, which is responsible for responding to habeas corpus claims, asked the court to dismiss Mayes’s petition, arguing that the claims should have been brought to court sooner. In response, Mayes argued that he acted diligently and in a timely manner, and failing to grant relief would result in a miscarriage of justice because he is innocent. The habeas court agreed with the Attorney General and dismissed all of Mayes’s claims on June 25, 2025.

Jamichael and his legal team have filed an appeal and continue to fight for his freedom.