ATLANTA — The Georgia Supreme Court has overturned a metro Atlanta lawyer’s conviction for malice murder in the death of a man during a road rage incident.

The court concluded that the Fulton County trial court should not have denied Bryan Keith Schmitt’s request to instruct the jury on the defense of accident.

Tuesday’s unanimous opinion, authored by Presiding Justice Nels S.D. Peterson, states:

“We conclude that the trial court erred because at least slight evidence supported that charge. Because the State has not carried its burden to show that it is highly probable that this error did not contribute to the verdict, we reverse Schmitt’s conviction.”

Schmitt was found guilty of malice murder, two counts of felony murder, and two counts of aggravated assault in 2022.

He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

Prosecutors said Schmitt got angry when real estate investor Hamid Jahangard, 60, threw a golf ball at his Mercedes in a parking lot in 2019.

Schmitt was accused of confronting Jahangard and then intentionally hitting him.

Schmitt argued that he hit Jahangard accidentally after the two men started to argue and that Jahangard also threw a trash can at his car.

“Evidence of Schmitt’s criminal intent was conflicting and far from overwhelming, and the harm from the trial court’s failure to instruct the jury on the defense of accident was compounded by the trial court’s express instruction that the jury must ‘disregard’ that accident was a key legal principle,” Presiding Justice Peterson writes.

Because the trial court also erred in declining the request to instruct the jury on the defense of accident on the related counts of felony murder and aggravated assault, those verdicts are also reversed, the court concluded.

The state has the option to retry the case.

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