Johnson v. State, 301 Ga. 277

Benjamin Johnson was indicted for felony murder and aggravated assault for stabbing his brother, Timothy Johnson, to death on December 8, 2013; jury convicted and sentenced to life for felony murder (assault merged).
At trial, the victim’s common-law wife, Hurt, testified she saw Benjamin stab Timothy multiple times during a physical struggle; Timothy was unarmed and later died from a chest wound to the heart.
Hurt also testified about an unrelated Stone Mountain incident from ~1999–2000 in which Timothy arrived battered and said Benjamin and cousins had jumped and cut him; that out-of-court statement was offered under OCGA § 24-8-807.
Benjamin testified he acted in self-defense, claiming Timothy attacked him and he grabbed a knife as a deterrent and accidentally stabbed Timothy; he had earlier told police he stabbed Timothy "about three or four times.”
Trial court admitted Hurt’s hearsay testimony about the decade-old Stone Mountain incident; Johnson later appealed, arguing erroneous admission of hearsay and ineffective assistance for failure to object or investigate.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Admissibility of Hurt’s hearsay about the Stone Mountain incident under OCGA § 24-8-807	Admission was improper hearsay; notice insufficient	State offered it as admissible under the residual hearsay exception	Even if erroneous, admission was harmless given overwhelming evidence of guilt; no reversible error
Prejudice from hearsay admission	Error likely affected verdict	Evidence was marginal, equivocal, remote in time, and not emphasized at trial	Harmless error because testimony was of limited pertinence and decades old
Ineffective assistance for failing to object/investigate the Stone Mountain testimony	Defense counsel’s failure to object and investigate was deficient and prejudicial	Any failure was not prejudicial because evidence error would be harmless	Claim fails: no reasonable probability outcome would differ when evidence harmless
Sufficiency of the evidence to support murder conviction	(not raised on appeal)	State: evidence sufficient	Court notes evidence supported conviction under Jackson v. Virginia; sufficiency satisfied

Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (standard for sufficiency of the evidence)
Parks v. State, 300 Ga. 303 (harmless-error analysis for admission of remote/irrelevant evidence)
Bridges v. State, 279 Ga. 351 (marginal value of evidence and harmless-error context)
Pearson v. State, 277 Ga. 813 (ineffective-assistance prejudice requires reasonable probability of different outcome)
Skaggs-Ferrell v. State, 287 Ga. App. 872 (ineffective-assistance claim fails when underlying error is harmless)
Smart v. State, 299 Ga. 414 (discussion of OCGA § 24-8-807 residual hearsay exception)
Malcolm v. State, 263 Ga. 369 (merger of aggravated assault into felony murder)