ALBANY, Ga. (WALB) - The Georgia Supreme Court has ruled that 43-year-old Timothy French’s murder conviction will stand, documents confirm.

French was arrested in 2014, years after A.J. Mosely’s death. He was charged with felony murder and armed robbery after investigators and prosecutors say he brutally stabbed the 82-year-old to death in his Smithville home.

French had long been a person of interest in the case. According to District Attorney Lewis Lamb, forensic advancements in contact DNA on the right, torn pocket of Mosley’s pants revealed a 1 in 100 million match to French. After two trials where one ended in a hung jury, French was sentenced to life without parole.

“I felt like it was a clean trial. There were very few places in which findings of error,” Lamb said. “And once the Supreme Court examined those, they determined there was no error, and the verdict should stand.”

In 2024, French appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court, claiming his request for DNA expert funding should not have been denied along with other motions related to jury fairness and trial procedures.

On May 28, Georgia’s highest court upheld his murder conviction. They said French failed to prove error. DA Lewis Lamb, who tried the case, acknowledges that cases like this take a long time and can be hard on families of the victim.

“We ask people to hang in there with us, and we will keep at it until we can get to a result that could be final,” Lamb said.

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