Court Opinion

ID: 9781600
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 16:54:18.541581+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:11:09.194364
License: Public Domain

McFADDEN, Judge,
dissenting.
I disagree with the majority’s holding that trial counsel’s repeated failures to object to improper bolstering testimony was a reasonable trial strategy. Instead, as explained in Division 1 of the special concurrence, those failures constituted deficient performance, and I therefore fully join in Division 1 of the special concurrence. However, I disagree with the special concurrence’s further conclusion that the defense was not prejudiced by that deficiency. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
The special concurrence relies on three cases in support of its conclusion that Gregoire has failed to show a reasonable probability that, but for his trial counsel’s failure to object to the four instances of testimony, the outcome of his trial would have been different. But those three cases — Carrie v. State, 298 Ga. App. 55, 63-64 (7) (679 SE2d 30) (2009), Al-Attawy v. State, 289 Ga. App. 570, 572-574 (1) (657 SE2d 552) (2008), and Frazier v. State, 278 Ga. App. 685, *320690-691 (3) (a) (629 SE2d 568) (2006), overruled in part on other grounds, Schofield v. Holsey, 281 Ga. 809 (642 SE2d 56) (2007) — are distinguishable from the instant case. In all three cases, the child victims were significantly older than the toddlers involved in this case, those older victims all testified at trial and their credibility was fully tested during cross-examination by defense counsel. Carrie, supra at 64; Al-Attawy, supra at 574; Frazier, supra at 691. Moreover, those three cases did not involve repeated instances of improper bolstering by state witnesses. In Carrie, supra, there was only one improper statement during a six-day trial with two dozen witnesses. Likewise, in Al-Attawy, supra at 573-574, there was a single comment of bolstering, from which the witness retreated on cross-examination, “thus diminishing its impact.” And in Frazier, supra at 691, the contested testimony consisted of “two responses that occurred during the course of a two-day trial with multiple witnesses.”
In the instant case, the alleged victims were aged two and three at the time they made their statements accusing Gregoire of molesting them. As the state’s own expert testified, forensic interviews of such young children are very difficult because they have short attention spans, they do not understand abstract ideas and they are susceptible to suggestion. The children’s own mother even testified that she had thought that the younger child might have been copying what he had heard his older brother say and that he might have been coerced by his father. But because neither of the children testified at trial, their credibility was not tested on cross-examination before the jury. Rather, the jury was left to determine their credibility solely by listening to their taped interviews and by hearing the state’s witnesses recount the children’s out-of-court statements. I do not fault either party for making the strategic decision not to call the children to testify live. On the contrary, I assume that those decisions were founded on sound evaluations of the evidence, as well as the difficulty of predicting what children this age will say. Those evaluations further illuminate the importance in this case of third-party testimony. Moreover, unlike the single instance of bolstering among twenty-four witnesses in Carrie, supra, of the five witnesses who testified in this case, the state elicited improper bolstering testimony from three of them, and did so near the end of its examinations of each of those witnesses.
Here, as in Mann v. State, 252 Ga. App. 70, 72 (1) (555 SE2d 527) (2001), in which we reversed a conviction due to counsel’s ineffective failure to object to bolstering testimony, the only evidence linking the accused to the alleged crimes arose from the statements of the victims. The evidence of Gregoire’s guilt was not overwhelming, and the state’s case depended on the credibility of the victims. See id. at *32174; Pointer v. State, 299 Ga. App. 249, 252 (1) (682 SE2d 362) (2009). Under these circumstances, and considering the combined effect of trial counsel’s errors, Schofield, supra at 812, n. 1, Gregoire “has met his burden of showing a reasonable probability that the result of his trial would have been different if the [improper bolstering of the victims’ credibility] had not been allowed. [Cit.]” Ward v. State, 304 Ga. App. 517, 529 (5) (b) (696 SE2d 471) (2010). Accordingly, reversal is required. Mann, supra.
Decided March 30, 2011
Reconsideration denied April 14, 2011
James C. Wyatt, for appellant.
T. Joseph Campbell, District Attorney, Shelly D. Faulk, Assistant District Attorney, for appellee.