TABOR v. THE STATE (Two Cases)

Tyree Tabor and Donny Spear were tried together in Fulton County and convicted of malice murder and other crimes after a marijuana deal at an Atlanta apartment complex turned into a shooting that killed Nicholas Miller and wounded Mar'Keil Leonard. Both men appealed, arguing their trial lawyers had failed them in various ways, such as not consulting enough, not interviewing witnesses, and not successfully splitting certain gun charges out of the trial. Spear also argued the judge should have granted his separate request to be tried apart from Tabor. The Supreme Court of Georgia reviewed each claim and found that the lawyers' choices were reasonable or that the men could not show the outcome would have been different, and some claims had not been properly raised earlier and were considered given up. The court also found the trial judge was allowed to deny the request to try Spear and Tabor separately without spelling out every reason on paper. Both convictions were upheld.

The court held that Tabor and Spear failed to show their trial lawyers performed unreasonably or that any errors changed the trial's outcome, several ineffective-assistance claims were waived for not being raised at the earliest opportunity, and the trial judge did not abuse his discretion in denying severance without making explicit findings.

The ruling reinforces how hard it is for defendants to win new trials by claiming their lawyers performed poorly, and confirms that judges do not have to write out detailed findings when denying requests to separate co-defendants' trials, affecting future criminal appeals statewide.

Affirmed

1. The court applied the two-part test from Strickland v. Washington, which requires a defendant claiming ineffective assistance to show both that his lawyer's performance fell below an objectively reasonable standard and that this failure likely changed the trial's result.
2. For Tabor's claims about limited consultation and failure to interview witnesses, the court found he never showed what additional evidence or strategy those steps would have uncovered, so he could not prove his lawyer acted unreasonably.
3. For Spear's claim about not timely seeking to split off a firearm-possession charge tied to the murder counts, the court explained that Georgia law does not require such splitting when the firearm charge underlies a felony murder count, so his lawyer's failure to win that motion was not deficient.
4. The court found several of Spear's ineffective-assistance claims, including one about a motion to sever, had been waived because his new-trial lawyer never raised them in the amended motion for new trial or got a ruling on them, and Georgia law requires such claims to be raised at the earliest practical opportunity.
5. On the severance request, the court applied the rule that judges need not write out explicit findings on the standard severance factors, confusion of evidence, spillover of evidence between defendants, and conflicting defenses, when the record shows those factors were considered, and concluded the trial judge had considered them here.

• murder conviction
• ineffective assistance of counsel
• motion to sever
• gang activity
• gun charges