Strong v. State

Aaron Strong was convicted in 2023 of felony murder and other crimes after fatally stabbing his wife's 32-year-old son, Maurice, and stabbing her 22-year-old grandson, Deandre, during a heated argument at their Cobb County home in 2015. This was Strong's second trial; the Supreme Court of Georgia had reversed his convictions from an earlier 2017 trial. On appeal, Strong argued the trial judge wrongly excluded text messages showing Maurice's girlfriend was worried about how upset Maurice was, wrongly allowed the prosecutor to comment on Strong's refusal to demonstrate the stabbing with a replica knife, wrongly refused a jury instruction on mistake of fact, and that his trial lawyer was constitutionally ineffective for not calling Maurice's girlfriend as a witness and not objecting to references to his prior trial testimony. The court rejected every argument, finding no harm from the excluded texts, no abuse of discretion in the closing argument, no error in the jury instructions, and no ineffective assistance, and it affirmed his convictions.

The trial court's exclusion of the text messages, even if erroneous, was harmless because other evidence of the victim's agitation and the strength of the State's case made it highly probable the error did not affect the verdict; the prosecutor's closing argument was a permissible inference from unstricken evidence; the mistake-of-fact instruction was properly refused because the jury was fully charged on self-defense; and trial counsel was not ineffective.

The ruling confirms that Georgia prosecutors may comment on a defendant's on-the-record refusal to demonstrate his version of events, and that unstricken courtroom statements remain evidence for the jury even after an objection is sustained, guidance that will shape future self-defense trials statewide.

Affirmed

1. The court applied the harmless-error test for excluded evidence, asking whether it is highly probable the error did not contribute to the verdict, and found the jury already heard ample evidence of the victim's anger and volatile state, so any error excluding the disputed text messages was harmless.
2. On the closing argument claim, the court noted that because Strong answered the prosecutor's question about demonstrating the stabbing before his lawyer objected, and his lawyer never asked to strike that answer or tell the jury to disregard it, the answer remained evidence the prosecutor could properly comment on in closing.
3. The court held that a mistake-of-fact jury instruction is unnecessary when the claimed 'mistake' is simply a belief that the victim had a weapon, so long as the judge fully instructs on self-defense and justification, which happened here, so refusing the instruction was not error.
4. On ineffective-assistance, the court applied the two-part Strickland test (requiring both unreasonably poor lawyering and a reasonable probability the outcome would have differed) and found trial counsel's decision not to call a hostile witness, the victim's girlfriend, was a reasonable strategic choice, not deficient performance.
5. The court found Strong's second ineffective-assistance claim, about failing to object to references to his prior trial testimony, was never properly raised in his motion for new trial or ruled on by the trial court, so it was forfeited on appeal.
6. Considering all claimed errors together under cumulative-error review, the court found no combined prejudice significant enough to require a new trial, given the strength of the eyewitness testimony against Strong.

• felony murder conviction
• self-defense claim
• ineffective assistance of counsel
• hearsay evidence
• closing argument