Welbon v. State, 304 Ga. 729

In 2014 Wayne Welbon was convicted of malice murder and related offenses for the 2013 killing of Taurean Reeves; he appealed raising ineffective-assistance and involuntariness claims.
In Welbon v. State, this Court (2017) affirmed the sufficiency of the evidence under Jackson v. Virginia but vacated and remanded on the voluntariness claim so the trial court could apply the correct legal standard.
On remand the trial court again denied Welbon’s motion for new trial, finding by a preponderance that his statements were voluntary; Welbon appeals that order.
Welbon raised, and this appeal resolves, an ineffective-assistance claim: trial counsel allegedly failed to move to strike a prospective juror for cause, forcing use of a peremptory strike.
The Court applied the law-of-the-case doctrine to bar relitigation of the sufficiency-of-the-evidence issue from the first appeal and held Welbon failed to prove Strickland prejudice from counsel’s purported omission.

Issue	Welbon's Argument	State's Argument	Held
Sufficiency of the evidence	Evidence was insufficient to support convictions	Prior appellate ruling already found evidence sufficient; law of the case prevents relitigation	Denied: prior decision controls; sufficiency not open on second appeal absent new trial
Ineffective assistance for failing to move to strike juror for cause	Counsel should have moved to strike a juror who stated she was "more than likely" leaning to guilt; using a peremptory was insufficient to cure	Any deficiency was not prejudicial because the juror was removed by a peremptory strike and no unqualified juror served	Denied: no Strickland prejudice shown; removal by peremptory made any error harmless

Welbon v. State, 301 Ga. 106, 799 S.E.2d 793 (2017) (prior appellate ruling on sufficiency; remand for voluntariness findings)
Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (1979) (legal sufficiency standard—whether any rational trier of fact could find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt)
Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984) (two-prong standard for ineffective assistance: deficient performance and prejudice)
Walker-Madden v. State, 301 Ga. 744, 804 S.E.2d 8 (2017) (application of law-of-the-case to prior sufficiency rulings)
Blount v. State, 303 Ga. 608, 814 S.E.2d 372 (2018) (defendant failed to show prejudice where challenged juror did not serve on jury)