Prison walls will apparently remain Michael Seth Perrault’s home for the rest of his life.
On May 2, the Supreme Court of Georgia denied the former Eatonton Police officer’s request for a new trial.
Perrault was found guilty of the murder of his wife in a February 2022 trial. The jury of eight women and four men deliberated about two-and-a-half hours before returning a guilty verdict against Perrault on malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault– family violence, and simple battery–family violence.
On Jan. 28, 2020, Perrault’s wife, Amanda, called Putnam County Sheriff’s Office accusing her husband of domestic abuse. Working for Eatonton Police Department at the time, Perrault was arrested that day and released on bond and placed on administrative leave from the police department.
Five days later, Amanda was shot to death in the master bedroom of their home near Lake Oconee in Putnam County.
Perrault was arrested shortly after. He told authorities Amanda had shot herself.
Following a weeklong trial and the jury’s verdict on Feb. 25, 2022, Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit Superior Court Chief Judge Brenda H. Trammell sentenced Perrault to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Perrault filed a motion for a new trial, which was denied by Trammell in September 2022. He subsequently filed an appeal with the State Supreme Court.
Perrault’s first assertion was “the evidence was not sufficient to support his conviction,” according to Justice Carla McMillian’s summary of the Court’s opinion.
The summary contained 10 pages describing the evidence that was presented during the trial, including testimonies of the Perraults’ neighbors, Perrault’s young daughter, and of the defendant himself.
The paragraph describing Perrault’s testimony reveals he gave three different versions of his reasons for shoving his wife that January day she first called authorities.
Other evidence from the trial listed in the summary included the position of Amanda’s lifeless body in relation to that of the gun, ammunition, magazine, and blood spatter.
Also, Perrault’s statements to deputies; testimony of Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents; text messages, videos and photos from Amanda’s and her family’s phone; and the medical examiner’s testimony and a toxicology report concluded the evidence.
“(Regarding Perrault’s first assertion) that the evidence was not sufficient to support his conviction beyond a reasonable doubt as a matter of Georgia statutory law because it did not exclude every reasonable theory other than guilt, we are not persuaded,” Justice McMillian wrote in the summary, citing in detail Georgia code and case law to support the Court’s decision. “The evidence presented at trial was sufficient to authorize the jury to reject Perrault’s theory that Amanda had killed herself and instead find Perrault guilty of the crimes of which he was convicted beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Perrault also contended “the trial court erred in refusing to transfer (his) case to a different venue.”
“This claim is without merit,” Justice McMillian wrote, adding that although Perrault filed a motion to change venue in November 2020, “he expressly withdrew that motion during a pretrial hearing in February 2022 before the trial court made any ruling on the motion. Accordingly, there is nothing for this Court to review.”
Perrault’s final argument was that “he was entitled to a new trial due to the cumulative effect of several evidentiary and other types of errors and the ineffective assistance of trial counsel,” according to the summary.
In response, Justice McMillian reiterated that the Justices were “not persuaded Perrault had shown he was entitled to a new trial on this basis.” McMillian wrote in the summary that Perrault “should have shown at least two errors that were committed in the course of the trial and… (how those) errors (would have) infected the jury’s deliberation.”
According to the summary, he needs to have listed the errors separately and specified where in the record those errors occurred but did not do so.
“This Court is not required to cull the record to search for support for Perrault’s claims and we decline to do so here,” McMillian states in the summary, supporting her statement with case law. “Accordingly, Perrault has failed to establish any error, much less cumulative error and this enumeration fails."
All nine of the Justices affirmed the Putnam jury’s February 2022 conviction of Perrault. See the entire summary online at gasupreme.us/2023-opinions/.