Opinion ID: 1781457
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: richmond was denied the effective assistance of counsel.

Text: ¶ 29. At the hearing on the motion for a new trial, Richmond's appellate counsel argued that the trial counsel was ineffective in failing to investigate the case; in failing to request a lesser-included offense instruction; in failing to file a motion for discovery; in failing to object to leading questions; and in failing to file a motion for a new trial. The prosecutor made the following response: No attorney is held to doing a perfect job in court. No court has held that a criminal defendant is entitled to a perfect defense. Mr. Crites probably made some mistakes, as did I. But I do not believe the record reveals that his performance was so deficient at trial as to render the result achieved fundamentally unfair. If your Honor remembers the trial, the evidence of the defendant's guilt was overwhelming. The victim said that her security light came on, she saw a person trying to break into her car, she kept on the phone with 911 giving them a blow by blow account of the thief's progress of trying to get into her car. She very refreshingly, quite candidly, said she could not identify the defendant. But when the police came on the scene, they saw this man exit the car after an asportation of the vehicle, defeating any possibility of trespass, and they maintained eye to eye contact as they ran him down through the brambles and the bushes and finally apprehended him. No reasonable jury could have come to any other conclusion but that the defendant was guilty as charged. There were no errors committed by the defense attorney that could possibly have changed the verdict of that jury which came in after seven minutes of deliberation. The trial court agreed, finding as follows: [t]here are some deficiencies. But the Court has to consider those deficiencies under the Strickland v. Washington test; and that is whether or not they amount to prejudice. Again, I had the benefit of sitting and listening to the evidence, and the evidence in this case was overwhelming. The jury did not take very long in its deliberations to find the defendant guilty. So while there were deficiencies in the performance of counsel, in my opinion, those deficiencies do not amount to the necessary requisites that the Strickland v. Washington case demand. ¶ 30. No error can be assigned to the trial court's findings. Richmond fails to establish ineffective assistance of counsel because he falls short of proving the prejudice prong of the test as set forth in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 2064, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). We adopted the Strickland test in Rankin v. State, 636 So.2d 652, 656 (Miss. 1994), holding that: The Strickland test requires a showing that counsel's performance was sufficiently deficient to constitute prejudice to the defense. The defendant has the burden of proof on both prongs. A strong but rebuttable presumption, that counsel's performance falls within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance, exists. The defendant must show that but for his attorney's errors, there is a reasonable probability that he would have received a different result in the trial court. (citations omitted). ¶ 31. While the trial court implicitly found that Richmond's trial counsel was deficient, the ruling on ineffective assistance of counsel was based on the absence of prejudice. The overwhelming evidence of Richmond's guilt forestalls the possibility of finding that mistakes by his trial counsel would have affected the final outcome at trial. [A] fundamental reason why no prejudice can be demonstrated in this case is that it is clear from the record that Richmond is hopelessly guilty. This overwhelming evidence of guilt makes the determination by the jury in this case thoroughly reliable. Ward v. State, 461 So.2d 724, 727 (Miss.1984). Because Richmond's theory of error implicates only the first prong of the Strickland test, he fails to carry the remainder of the burden by proving prejudice at trial. Therefore, Richmond's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel is without merit.