Albury v. State

Riki Ray Albury was convicted in DeKalb County of stabbing Ronald Roach to death along with two co-defendants. On appeal, Albury argued the trial judge should have removed two jurors who mentioned scheduling conflicts, that a disturbing post-incision autopsy photo should never have been shown to the jury, and that his lawyer was constitutionally ineffective for not asking the other jurors about bias after one juror got sick, and for not requesting a jury instruction on the lesser crime of voluntary manslaughter. The Supreme Court of Georgia found that Albury never actually objected to the two jurors at trial, so that claim could not be reviewed. It found the autopsy photo was properly weighed for its usefulness against any unfair impact and was rightly admitted because it helped show a co-defendant, not just Albury, had inflicted certain wounds. Finally, the court found Albury's lawyer made a reasonable strategic choice, made with his input, to pursue an all-or-nothing defense rather than risk a compromise conviction.

The court held that Albury's juror-related claims were unpreserved for appeal, that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the post-incision autopsy photograph because it had significant probative value outweighing any prejudice, and that trial counsel's all-or-nothing defense strategy, chosen with Albury's input, was not deficient performance.

The ruling reinforces that Georgia defendants must object to jurors at trial to preserve the issue for appeal, that graphic autopsy photos can be shown when they help explain who caused specific injuries, and that lawyers who make informed strategic choices with their clients are generally protected from ineffective-assistance claims.

Affirmed

1. Because Albury never objected or moved to strike the two jurors with scheduling conflicts during voir dire, that claim was waived for ordinary appellate review, and no plain-error review applies to this type of issue.
2. For the autopsy photo, the court applied Georgia's evidence rules on relevance and unfair prejudice (Rules 401-403 of the Evidence Code, found at O.C.G.A. §§ 24-4-401 to 24-4-403), which allow relevant evidence to be excluded only if its value is substantially outweighed by unfair prejudice, and found the trial judge implicitly performed this balancing even without citing the rule by name.
3. Applying that balancing to the facts, the court found the photo had real value because it was the only way to show a head wound caused by a blunt object rather than a knife, which helped prove that someone besides the co-defendant who used the knife also attacked the victim.
4. On the juror-illness claim, the court used the two-part test for ineffective assistance of counsel (deficient performance and resulting harm to the outcome, known as the Strickland standard), and found Albury offered no evidence that questioning the other jurors would have changed the trial's result, so the claim failed regardless of whether counsel's inaction was deficient.
5. On the missing voluntary manslaughter instruction, the court found counsel's decision, made after discussing it with Albury, to pursue an all-or-nothing defense rather than risk a middle-ground guilty verdict was a reasonable trial strategy and not so unreasonable that no competent lawyer would have chosen it.

• murder conviction
• autopsy photo evidence
• ineffective assistance of counsel
• jury selection
• voluntary manslaughter instruction