Aрpellant Dijuan Marshall was convicted of felony murder and related crimes in connection with a home invasion during which victim Joshua Scott was shot and killed.
1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdicts, the evidence at trial established as follows. In the early morning hours of November 18, 2008, armed men broke into a home in College Park occupied by victim Scott and his friend, Kevin Terrell. According to Terrell, the home’s front door was kicked in by several men who announced themselves as police, and a gunfight ensued, during which Scott was shot and killed.
Appellant was an active participant in the home invasion, together with co-defendant Mark Thornton and co-indictees Simeon Slade, Anthony Brooks, and Wayne Mayers. Slade needed money and, on the
After the shooting, all the perpetrators fled the scene, and Thornton dropped off Slade, along with Brooks, at a nearby hospital. Later that morning, Fulton County Police Detective Tamika Pritch-ett, who had responded to the hospital’s report of a gunshot injury, spoke with Slade’s mother. The mother reported that she had received a phone call that morning from the brother of “TJ,” one of Slade’s friends, inquiring about TJ’s whereabouts. Detective Pritchett contacted the brother, who reluctantly identified “TJ” as appellant. Detective Pritchett then tracked down appellant’s mother, who was unaware of her son’s whereabouts, noting that she had awakened at 1:00 that morning to find that he had left the house.
In the ensuing investigation, Mayers and Slade each gave recorded statements to law enforсement officers implicating appellant in the crimes. Both testified at trial as part of respective plea deals; though Slade largely recanted his prior statement as it related to appellant’s involvement in planning the robbery, on cross-examination he acknowledged that he had previously told police that the robbery was appellant’s idea.
Although aрpellant does not specifically challenge the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his convictions, we conclude that the evidence as summarized above was sufficient tо enable a rational trier of fact to find appellant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes of which he was convicted. Jackson v. Virginia,
2. Appellаnt contends that his trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to object to certain testimony at trial. To establish ineffective assistance of counsel, a defendant must show thаt his counsel’s performance was professionally deficient and that but for such deficient performance there is a reasonable probability that the result of the trial would have beеn different. Strickland v. Washington,
(a) Appellant first assails counsel’s failure to object when the prosecutor was permitted to play for the jury recordings of the pre-trial statements by Slade and Mayers. These witnesses were the only two of the five participants in the crimes to testify, and their testimony was thus critical to the State’s case. Both witnesses were subject to vigorous cross-examination by both appellant’s and Thornton’s trial attorneys regarding the plea deals they had extracted in exchange for their testimony and various inconsistencies between their trial testimony and respective pre-trial statements. The State opted to introduce the recordings of these witnesses’ pre-trial statements during its direct examinations, respectively, of Detective Pritch-ett, who had conducted Mayers’ interview, and Fulton County Police Detective Mаrc McGowan, who had conducted Slade’s interview. Neither appellant’s nor Thornton’s trial counsel objected when the recordings were tendered and published to the jury.
At appellant’s nеw trial hearing, trial counsel, an experienced criminal defense attorney, testified that, while he had considered objecting, he made the conscious decision not to object, based on his determination that the recordings were more damaging to these witnesses’ overall credibility than they were corroborative of their trial testimony. The recordings not only reinforced incоnsistencies between the witnesses’ past and current accounts of the crimes but also exposed how the interviewing detectives were skeptical of certain assertions made by these witnesses in their earlier statements. Under these circumstances, trial counsel’s decision to refrain from objecting constituted reasonable trial strategy and cannot support a claim оf ineffectiveness. See Johnson v. State,
(b) Appеllant also contends that trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to object to Detective Pritchett’s testimony regarding the purported hearsay statements of (1) Slade’s mother, to the effect that she had received a call from “TJ’s” brother on the morning of the crimes inquiring as to “TJ’s” whereabouts; (2) appellant’s brother, identifying “TJ” as appellant; and (3) appellant’s mоther, stating that appellant had not been at home during the time frame of the crimes. To the extent any of these statements would have been objectionable as hearsay, we find no prejudice from counsel’s failure to object, as the effect of these statements together was merely cumulative of other undisputed evidence establishing “TJ” as appellant’s nickname and identifying appellant as a participant in the crimes, including the testimony and pre-trial statements of Mayers and Slade. See, e.g., Jackson v. State,
Judgment affirmed.
Notes
The crimes occurred on November 18, 2008. A Fulton County grand jury indicted appellant, along with co-indictees Mark Thornton, Anthony Brooks, Wayne Mayers, and Simeon Slade, in connection with the crimes. Appellant was charged with malice murder, three counts of felony murder, aggravated assault, criminal attempt to commit armed robbery, burglary, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, and conspiracy to commit armed robbery. Follоwing a May 2010 jury trial at which appellant and Thornton were tried jointly, appellant was found not guilty of malice murder but guilty on all other counts. Appellant was sentenced on May 25, 2010 to life in prison for felony murder predicated on aggravated assault, plus a total of 55 years on the other counts that were not merged or vacated by operation of law. See Malcolm v. State,