Life Sentence Upheld For Woman In DeKalb Boarding House Stabbing Death

DECATUR, GA — The Supreme Court of Georgia has upheld the murder conviction and life sentence for a woman accused of stabbing her boyfriend to death in 2018 in DeKalb County.

According to the court opinion released Tuesday, a grand jury in DeKalb indicted Sasha McCalop on April 21, 2018, on malice murder, felony murder and two counts of aggravated assault charges.

McCalop was accused in the Jan. 17, 2018, stabbing death of Michael Martin, her boyfriend of three years, at a DeKalb boarding house.

She was convicted in March 2019 on all counts and was sentenced to serve life in prison with the possibility of parole for malice murder. All other charges were merged or vacated, according to the opinion.

McCalop secured a new attorney and filed a motion for a new trial. Her motion was denied on Aug. 4, 2022.

She filed an appeal, challenging the testimony of a doctor the state used as an expert witness and the use of a friend's testimony. The appeal was heard on Feb. 9; however, the court unanimously upheld her murder conviction.

Case Background

According to the opinion, McCalop and Martin began dating in late 2015, and the couple's relationship became "tumultuous." The two were involved in four instances of domestic violence between April 2016 and October 2017, the opinion stated.

It was the last dispute in January 2018 that turned deadly.

Testimonies detailed witnesses overhearing Martin shouting and shattering glass against a wall in the early morning hours in a boarding room on Jan. 17.

Subsequently, Martin was overheard initially being aggressive but was later heard sounding as if he was in distress, the court opinion stated.

At 5:39 a.m. that day, Martin called police about a dispute between him and McCalop. He told dispatch McCalop was not listening to him and notified dispatch there were lots of knives at the scene, according to the opinion.

During the call, a voice was faintly heard in the background. Martin spent more than a minute sounding distressed before going silent on the phone, according to the opinion.

Door slamming and a woman talking were heard in the background during the call, according to the opinion. Then, Martin was heard on the phone groaning, not responding to the dispatcher before the call was disconnected, according to the opinion.

Police responded and found Martin dead near the rooming house's front door, according to the opinion. A trail of blood in snowy weather led police to a nearby shed, where McCalop was found and arrested.

Martin had sharp injuries in both hands, a superficial cut on the right side of his back, a fatal stab wound that severed an artery on his right thigh and a significant amount of alcohol in his blood, according to the opinion. "Free cocaine" and cocaethylene were also found in his system, according to the opinion.

The Appeal

McCalop appealed her murder conviction on Feb. 9, making several arguments against state witness Dr. John Hamel and one argument against the use of a friend's testimony.

She claimed the trial court erred in allowing Hamel to comment on her state of mind because he did not personally interview or evaluate her, the court opinion stated.

Justice Shawn Ellen LaGrua wrote in the opinion Hamel did not implicate McCalop's mental state by addressing the nature of her relationship with Martin and speaking on whether or not McCalop misled police during her interview, according to the opinion.

She made additional claims, accusing Hamel of not being familiar with Georgia law on battered person syndrome and never having testified in a Georgia court. McCalop claimed the trial court made an error in allowing Hamel to testify that battered person syndrome had no scientific basis. These claims were rejected, according to the opinion.

McCalop's claims that the trial court was incorrect in giving jury instructions on battered person syndrome and that the state committed prosecutorial misconduct by arguing battered person syndrome was not a recognized diagnosis or defense were rejected, according to the opinion.

During the trial, McCalop's friend testified on her behalf that she was "a calm person" and not "an aggressive type of person." According to the opinion, the state argued the friend's testimony was the gateway to further dive into McCalop's character and alleged past instances of violence, according to the opinion.

“Pretermitting whether the trial court erred in allowing the state to ask (the friend) whether she was ‘aware’ of eight aggressive acts allegedly committed by McCalop, we conclude that any error was harmless because it is highly probable that the error did not contribute to the verdict,” LaGrua wrote in the opinion.