Middlebrooks v. State, 310 Ga. 748

In January 2017, Deshaun Middlebrooks and co-defendant Tory Jones (both members of the "Sex Money Murder" subset of the Bloods) met Quintavious Barber in a parking lot after a disputed gun trade; Middlebrooks opened a trunk and immediately began shooting. Barber was killed; Keundre Chappell was wounded.
Middlebrooks was indicted on malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault (of Barber), aggravated assault and battery (of Chappell), and possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony; a jury convicted him on all counts at a joint trial with Jones.
The trial court admitted extensive gang-related evidence over Middlebrooks’ pretrial motions to exclude it as improper character evidence and unduly prejudicial, ruling the evidence was intrinsic to the charged crimes.
Middlebrooks moved for a new trial and later appealed, arguing (1) the court erred by admitting gang evidence and (2) trial counsel was ineffective for not retaining a gang expert; he did not contest sufficiency of the evidence.
The Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed the convictions but vacated the aggravated-assault conviction as duplicative of the malice-murder conviction (merger), and rejected the ineffective-assistance and evidentiary challenges.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Admissibility of gang evidence	Gang evidence was improper character evidence, irrelevant, and unduly prejudicial	Gang evidence was intrinsic — explained motive, context, and chain of events	Court: Evidence was intrinsic and reasonably necessary to complete the story; admission not an abuse of discretion
Rule 403 prejudice balancing	Gang evidence's prejudicial effect outweighed probative value	Probative value of motive/context outweighed prejudice; credibility issues go to weight	Court: Probative value not substantially outweighed; admission proper
Ineffective assistance for not retaining gang expert	Counsel was unprepared and should have called a gang expert; failure prejudiced defense	Decision not to call expert was reasonable trial strategy; cross-examination and argument were adequate	Court: No deficient performance shown; Strickland prejudice not established
Sentencing/merger of convictions	(Not raised by Middlebrooks) Trial court sentenced on both malice murder and aggravated assault based on same fatal gunshot	State did not contest but court must correct duplicative sentences	Court: Aggravated-assault conviction merged into malice-murder conviction; that conviction and sentence vacated

Williams v. State, 302 Ga. 474 (2017) (sets out standards for admitting intrinsic evidence to complete the story of the crime)
Anglin v. State, 302 Ga. 333 (2017) (Rule 403 balancing for gang-membership evidence; probative value may outweigh unfair prejudice)
Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984) (two-part test for ineffective assistance of counsel: deficiency and prejudice)
Davis v. State, 272 Ga. 327 (2000) (discrepancy in witness testimony affects weight, not admissibility)
Stripling v. State, 304 Ga. 131 (2018) (decision whether to call an expert is trial strategy and not automatically ineffective assistance)
Marshall v. State, 297 Ga. 445 (2015) (strong presumption that counsel's performance was adequate)