Anderson v. State

A Newton County jury convicted Joshua Anderson of malice murder after he struck and killed Kevin Marshall with his truck following a fight at a house in Covington. Anderson said he hit Marshall by accident after rounding a blind curve too fast to stop. He appealed, arguing his trial lawyer was ineffective for not hiring an accident reconstruction expert and for not objecting when the judge refused to instruct the jury on accident. The Supreme Court of Georgia rejected both claims. It found the lawyer reasonably made the same "not enough time to avoid him" argument through other evidence and closing argument. It ruled the second claim was barred because it was never raised in the trial court. With no errors, there was nothing to add up.

A trial lawyer is not constitutionally ineffective for choosing to present a defense through argument and ordinary evidence instead of an expert, if that choice was reasonable. A claim of ineffective assistance not raised and ruled on in the trial court is procedurally barred, and cumulative prejudice requires multiple shown errors.

The ruling shows how hard it is to win a new trial by saying a lawyer should have called an expert. Defendants must also raise each specific lawyer-error claim in the trial court, or they lose the chance to argue it on appeal.

Affirmed

1. To win an ineffective-assistance claim, a defendant must show his lawyer performed unreasonably and that this likely changed the outcome. If he fails on one part, the court need not consider the other.
2. On the missing expert, the court noted that choosing whether to call an expert is trial strategy. It counts as deficient only if no competent attorney would have made the same choice.
3. The defense lawyer argued, using the surveillance video, the blind curve, the speed evidence and the neighbor's account of screeching tires, that Anderson had too little time to avoid Marshall. That was the same point the expert would have made, so the strategy was reasonable.
4. On the failure to object to the jury charge, the court found Anderson never raised that specific claim in his motion for new trial and the trial court never ruled on it. The claim was therefore procedurally barred.
5. Because Anderson showed no instance of deficient performance, there were no multiple errors whose combined harm could be weighed, so the cumulative-prejudice claim failed.

• murder conviction
• ineffective assistance of counsel
• accident reconstruction expert
• Newton County
• truck collision