Court Opinion

ID: 9587716
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:25:33.555139+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:34:31.590567
License: Public Domain

SEARS, Justice,
concurring.
I concur fully with the detailed and well-reasoned majority opinion. I write separately to address the following statement made in the dissent:
The availability of unbridled post-trial inquiry, as sanctioned by the Court today, has transformed Georgia’s state habeas proceedings into nothing more than a second trial wherein the habeas petitioner’s trial attorney becomes, in effect, the defendant and, if he did not obtain a life sentence for his client, he is presumed to be constitutionally ineffective.5
This Court’s own records show that since 1995, twenty-eight habeas petitions have been filed in this Court by petitioners who have been sentenced to death for their crimes. Most, if not all, of these habeas petitioners claim that either their trial counsel or their appellate counsel, or both, were ineffective. Of the twenty-eight death penalty habeas petitions filed since 1995, this Court has reversed and remanded one habeas appeal on grounds relative to a petitioner’s claim of ineffective counsel.6 Accordingly, the statement in the dissent is untrue.

 Disent at 221

 Turpin v. Todd, 268 Ga. 820, 831-833 (493 SE2d 900) (1997).