High court upholds Laurens Co. man’s murder conviction 

The Georgia Supreme Court has rejected the appeal of a Laurens County man seeking to overturn a 2022 murder conviction. 

In a ruling released Tuesday, the court upheld the conviction of Andrew Thomas Huber in connection to the shooting death of Daniel Raburn on July 3, 2020. Huber will continue to serve his life sentence, the court ruled, for his role in Raburn’s death, though he did not personally pull the trigger. 

The murder was a result of a domestic dispute between Raburn and his fiancé, Brandilee Woodard-Brady, who had a “toxic” relationship, the opinion explained. After an altercation, Woodard-Brady texted Huber a message to “Beat [Raburn’s] ass.”

Records show that Huber and another friend, Thomas Wayne Harper, confronted Raburn in the yard of a house on the 900 block of Village Circle in Dublin. Raburn used racial slurs against Harper, who is black, which led to another altercation resulting in Raburn being shot in the head. The two fled the scene.

Harper would later confess to the shooting. Woodard-Brady would testify to being in the home during the murder but unaware to what occurred, while Huber testified to assisting Harper in the fight and driving the two away. None of the three contacted police or emergency personnel for assistance. 

In his appeal, Huber argued there was insufficient evidence for his murder conviction, that he had insufficient legal representation and that the jury was given poor instructions during his trial. 

The court disagreed, citing previous cases and Huber’s own admissions. 

“To prove Huber guilty of the charge of felony murder predicated on aggravated assault, it was not necessary for the State to prove that he personally, hit, kicked or shot Raburn so long as the State proved that Huber was a party to the crimes,” Justice Carla Wong McMillian wrote in the court’s ruling.  

The ruling was unanimous, thus upholding the conviction.