Court Opinion

ID: 9581083
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:11:35.668585+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:41.726994
License: Public Domain

CARLEY, Justice,
concurring.
I fully agree with the majority opinion, but write separately to examine more specifically Appellant’s contention, as stated in Divisions 2 and 3, that the attorney who first amended the motion for new trial was ineffective in failing to present the testimony of two individuals as “defense” witnesses. Obviously, as appellate counsel, that lawyer could not have called those individuals at trial, but only, as the majority notes in Division 2, at the first motion for new trial hearing. It is apparent from the majority opinion that the testimony of such witnesses at that hearing would have been relevant only to the determination of trial counsel’s effectiveness. Thus, subsequent production of that testimony could be material to whether the appellate counsel who first amended the motion for new trial was herself ineffective when she failed to assert trial counsel’s ineffectiveness in not calling the witnesses. However, Appellant does not make any such contention. Instead, he maintains only that that appellate attorney was ineffective for failing to call the two witnesses to testify in *327support of the grounds which she raised in the amended motion for new trial. Moreover, our previous remand rendered “moot Appellant’s claim that his first appellate counsel was ineffective for failing to raise the effectiveness of trial counsel in the new trial motion she filed in 1997.” Sweet v. State, 276 Ga. 545, 548, fn. 9 (580 SE2d 231) (2003).
Decided September 13, 2004.
Lawrence Lewis, for appellant.
Paul L. Howard, Jr., District Attorney, Marc A. Mallon, Assistant District Attorney, Thurbert E. Baker, Attorney General, Chad E. Jacobs, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.