Flanigan v. State

• Court: Georgia Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: CARLEY
• Citation: Flanigan v. State, 269 Ga. 160, 496 S.E.2d 255 (Ga. 1998)
• Decision Date: 02 March 1998
• Docket Number: No. S98A0386,S98A0386
• Parties: , 98 FCDR 736 FLANIGAN v. The STATE.

Page 255

496 S.E.2d 255

269 Ga. 160, 98 FCDR 736

FLANIGAN v. The STATE.

No. S98A0386.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

March 2, 1998.

Michael Scott Waldrop, Gentry & Waldrop, John Andrew Nix, Maddox, Starnes & Nix, Conyers, for Willie B. Flanigan.

Angelica M. Woo, Asst. Atty. Gen., Paula K. Smith, Senior Asst. Atty. Gen., Department of Law, Atlanta, Nancy Nash Bills, Asst. Dist. Atty., Conyers, for the State.

CARLEY, Justice.

A jury found Willis Flanigan guilty of malice murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. After entering judgments of conviction on the jury's verdicts, the trial court sentenced Flanigan to life imprisonment for the murder and to a consecutive one-year term for the possession of a firearm offense. Flanigan's motion for new trial was denied and he appeals. ¹

1. Flanigan contends that the evidence is not sufficient to authorize his conviction for malice murder. The victim was Consweyla Jones. Flanigan and Ms. Jones shared a room at a boarding house which was ostensibly for men only. The day before the homicide, the two quarreled and Ms. Jones twice called the police. On the second of these occasions, she claimed that Flanigan had a gun and was going to kill her. To defuse the situation, the police and the resident manager of the boarding house told Ms. Jones that she should leave. She did leave the next morning, but later returned when O.J. Smith, another boarding house resident, offered her the use of his room because he would not be occupying it that night. Upon Flanigan's discovery of Ms. Jones' return, a verbal altercation erupted which then escalated and eventually culminated in him firing the shots that killed her. According to an officer, Flanigan made an on-the-scene statement to the effect that he did not "know if she had anything in her hand or not. [He] just started out shooting.... [His] mind just clicked and [he] lost control there for a minute." This account of the shooting was consistent with Flanigan's subsequent in-custody statement which was videotaped. After conferring with trial counsel, however, Flanigan summoned officers and told them for the first time that he had seen "something shiny" in Ms. Jones' hand. At trial, Flanigan testified that Ms. Jones had "come at [him] with a knife in her hand."

This evidence was sufficient to authorize a rational trier of fact to find proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Flanigan's claim of self-defense was a recent fabrication and that he was guilty of the malice murder of Ms. Jones. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979); Connor v. State, 268 Ga. 656, 657(1), 492 S.E.2d 669 (1997).

2. In the motion for new trial, Flanigan's newly appointed appellate counsel raised the issue of the effectiveness of trial counsel. At the hearing on the motion, trial counsel appeared and testified with regard to his defense of Flanigan. After the hearing, the trial court found that Flanigan had received effective legal representation. Although recognizing that the trial court's finding must be affirmed unless clearly erroneous, Flanigan nevertheless urges that his trial counsel provided him with ineffective assistance. See generally Johnson v. State, 266 Ga. 380, 383(2), 467 S.E.2d 542 (1996).

As to the four instances cited by Flanigan, the record shows that the trial court was authorized to find the following:

a) Flanigan's trial attorney did not seek funds for an expert to determine the integrity of the videotape of Flanigan's in-custody interview. However, counsel testified that this decision was based upon his own personal review of the videotape, with the prosecutor and again with Flanigan, which revealed no indication of any alteration. Flanigan's attorney discounted the possibility that the videotape had been subjected to more sophisticated alterations, since there was nothing to indicate that the State would have expended the funds necessary to create a seemingly unaltered videotape.

b) Although he did not conduct a pre-trial interview of Mr. Smith, counsel explained that this was because Mr. Smith was a transient who could not be easily located. Moreover, the lack of an interview...