Lane v. State

Tyra Dale Lane was convicted in 2004 of felony murder and other crimes after a College Park Krystal restaurant employee was fatally shot during a robbery. Lane blamed the shooting on his friend Bernard Champion, but evidence including eyewitness identification, cell phone testimony, and statements Lane made to his girlfriend tied him to the crime. On appeal, decided many years later after a long-delayed motion for new trial, Lane argued the trial judge should not have let Champion testify that he offered to take a lie detector test, and that his trial lawyer was ineffective for not using Champion's old criminal record to attack his credibility and for not objecting to the prosecutor's closing argument about the polygraph offer. The Supreme Court of Georgia found Lane never properly objected at trial to the polygraph testimony, so there was nothing to review under the older evidence rules that applied to his case. It also found his lawyer's strategic choices did not amount to ineffective assistance, and it affirmed the conviction.

The court held that Lane's polygraph-related objection was not preserved for appellate review because no specific objection or ruling appears in the record, and that trial counsel's decisions not to introduce additional old convictions or object to a closing argument did not amount to constitutionally ineffective assistance under the Strickland test.

The decision reinforces that defendants tried under Georgia's old evidence code must object clearly and get a ruling to preserve issues for appeal, and it shows how much deference appellate courts give to defense lawyers' strategic choices during cross-examination and closing argument.

Affirmed

1. Because Lane's case was tried in 2004 under Georgia's old Evidence Code, plain error review, which lets an appellate court fix a serious mistake even without an objection, does not apply, so an unpreserved objection cannot be reviewed at all.
2. Since the bench conference about the polygraph testimony was not transcribed and no ruling appears in the record, the court found Lane's objection to Champion's testimony about offering a lie detector test was not properly preserved for appeal.
3. Applying the Strickland test, which requires showing both that a lawyer's performance was deficient and that the deficiency likely changed the trial's outcome, the court looked at whether trial counsel acted unreasonably by not introducing Champion's older felony convictions.
4. The court found trial counsel had already thoroughly attacked Champion's credibility through cross-examination about his current sentence, informant work, and through Lane's own testimony blaming Champion, so skipping the older convictions was a reasonable strategic choice, not deficient performance.
5. Even assuming counsel should have objected to the prosecutor's closing argument defending Champion's credibility, the court found no reasonable likelihood the trial's outcome would have differed given the substantial evidence of Lane's guilt and the judge's instruction that closing arguments are not evidence.
6. Because the court found only one assumed, not established, error, it held Lane could not claim cumulative prejudice from multiple mistakes, since that analysis only considers actual errors, not assumed ones.

• felony murder conviction
• ineffective assistance of counsel
• polygraph testimony
• Krystal restaurant robbery
• evidence code