Mitchell v. State

• Decision Date: 10 February 2020
• Docket Number: S19A1330
• Citation: 838 S.E.2d 820,308 Ga. 1
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court
• Parties: MITCHELL v. The STATE.

308 Ga. 1

838 S.E.2d 820

MITCHELL

v.The STATE.

S19A1330

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: February 10, 2020

Steven Eric Phillips, OFFICE OF THE PUBLIC DEFENDER, 100 Peachtree Street, Suite 1600, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Michael Alexander Oldham, Assistant Attorney General, DEPARTMENT OF LAW, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Paul L. Howard, Jr., District Attorney, Lyndsey Hurst Rudder, Deputy D.A., FULTON COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, 136 Pryor Street, S.W., 4th Floor, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, Aslean Zachary Eaglin, A.D.A., FULTON COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, 136 Pryor Street SW, Suite C-640, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, for Appellee.

Ellington, Justice.

Tony Mitchell was convicted of the malice murder of Randy Lewis and related crimes following a trial before a Fulton County jury.¹ On appeal, Mitchell contends that his trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance because she failed to competently execute her chosen strategy of discrediting the jailhouse informant who testified that Mitchell had confessed to having killed Lewis. We affirm for the reasons that follow.

Viewed in a light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence presented at trial shows the following. In June 2011, Mitchell and Lewis were roommates living in a halfway house in Fulton County. The house was a duplex; Mitchell and Lewis lived on one side and a group of approximately six to eight men lived on the other side.

Lewis worked in a nearby restaurant. He was a dependable employee who reported to work when scheduled. Lewis also owned a black sedan. He gave rides to other halfway house residents but he did not allow other people to drive his car.

Lewis was last seen alive when he left work in the early morning of June 12, 2011. Lewis failed to report for work the following day, after which his manager called him numerous times without success and knocked on the door of his residence with no response. Witnesses saw Mitchell leave the residence he shared with Lewis during the early morning of June 12, walk to Lewis's car carrying a bag, place the bag in the trunk of the car, and drive away.

Mitchell, who was a convicted felon, wore an electronic monitoring device. That device alerted Mitchell's parole officer that Mitchell left his residence on June 12 and had not returned by June 13, upon which a warrant was issued for Mitchell's arrest. At some point, Mitchell removed the device from his ankle.

On June 16, men living in the halfway house noticed a foul smell emanating from an open window of Lewis's and Mitchell's residence. One of the men crawled through the window and unlocked the front door. The rest of the men then entered the residence and found Lewis's body under a bed. After being called to the scene, the investigating officer saw that Lewis's body was wrapped in a sheet and that his head was, the investigator testified, "wrapped in plastic and taped." The officer also saw a rope around Lewis's neck and a lot of blood.

Lewis's car was later found parked at a Waffle House restaurant in Macon. On June 22, Mitchell was arrested in Miami, Florida on charges of shoplifting, after which he was extradited to Georgia. Once in Georgia, Mitchell was interviewed by an Atlanta Police Department detective. During the interview, Mitchell acknowledged that he drove Lewis's vehicle to Macon. He claimed that he removed his ankle monitor because he had failed a drug test and expected that he would soon be arrested.

In early spring 2013, Mitchell met Stacy Bennett in the Fulton County Jail, where both men were being held. In August 2013, Bennett wrote a letter to the Fulton County District Attorney's office stating that he had information concerning the murder in Mitchell's case. Bennett testified at Mitchell's trial in 2015 that Mitchell told him the following. Mitchell lived in a halfway house with Lewis. Lewis had asked Mitchell to look at a mechanical problem with Lewis's car. Mitchell told Lewis that he could not fix the car without "some kind of box." Mitchell then asked Lewis for money, and Lewis told Mitchell to "chill" because the police had come around looking for Mitchell. After Lewis went to sleep, Mitchell struck Lewis on the head with a "brass knuckle weapon" welded with a "southwest side zone three," which consisted of "like a ‘W’ and then a three on it." After Mitchell hit Lewis, a struggle ensued, during which Mitchell wrapped a rope around Lewis's neck and strangled him. Mitchell "pulled a trashcan in the room and he took a bag and wrapped it around the guy and put tape on it[.]" Mitchell then got in the car and headed to Florida.

At the time of Mitchell's trial, Bennett was serving a prison sentence following his conviction for aggravated assault and other crimes. He testified that he had not been promised anything in exchange for his testimony but that an assistant district attorney was writing a letter on his behalf to the parole board.

The medical examiner who supervised Lewis's autopsy concluded that he died due to strangulation and blunt force head trauma

. The medical examiner described Lewis's head as completely encased in plastic packing tape wrapped "in several layers and more or less a couple of inches thick[.]" Photographs taken during the autopsy showed, as described by witnesses, a "W" or "3" shaped wound pattern over Lewis's ear.

1. Mitchell does not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence to support his convictions. Nevertheless, in accordance with this Court's standard practice in appeals of murder cases, we have reviewed the record and conclude that the evidence, as summarized above, was sufficient to enable a rational trier of fact to find Mitchell guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes for which he was convicted. See Jackson v. Virginia , 443 U. S. 307 (III) (B), 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979).

2. Mitchell contends that the trial court erred in finding that he received effective assistance of counsel. He argues that his trial counsel's performance fell below an objective standard of reasonableness because she failed to use readily available evidence to further her express trial strategy of discrediting Bennett, the jailhouse informant. He argues that trial counsel's deficient performance prejudiced him because, apart from Bennett's testimony, the State's case was circumstantial.

To succeed on his claims of ineffective assistance, Mitchell must establish that his counsel's performance was professionally deficient and that he suffered prejudice as a result. See Strickland v. Washington , 466 U. S. 668, 687, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). To show deficient performance, Mitchell must establish that his attorney performed at trial in an objectively unreasonable way considering all the circumstances and in the light of prevailing professional norms. See Henderson v. State , 304 Ga. 733, 735 (3), 822 S.E.2d 228 (2018). In reviewing an ineffectiveness claim, this Court

must apply a strong presumption that counsel's conduct fell within the wide range of reasonable professional performance. Thus, decisions regarding trial tactics and strategy may form the basis for an ineffectiveness claim only if they were so patently unreasonable that no competent attorney would have followed such a course.

Id. (citation and punctuation omitted).

To establish prejudice, Mitchell must prove that there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's deficiency, the result of his trial would have been different. See Strickland , 466 U. S. at 694, 104 S.Ct. 2052. We need not address both parts of the Strickland test if Mitchell makes an insufficient showing on one. See id. at 697, 104 S.Ct. 2052.

The record shows that Mitchell's trial counsel interviewed Bennett before the trial. She was aware that Bennett planned to testify that Mitchell had confessed to him. Trial counsel came to believe that Bennett was not being truthful and that he had received his information about the details of the case from looking at Mitchell's pre-trial discovery. Trial counsel was aware that Mitchell had been in physical possession of his discovery while in jail through her discussions with Mitchell. Her strategy was to show that Bennett was lying and that he was seeking favors from the State.

At trial, Mitchell's counsel cross-examined Bennett at length. In response to her questioning, Bennett acknowledged that he had spent more than 13 years of his life in prison, that he would "do anything to get out" of prison, that the assistant district attorney was writing a letter to the parole board on his behalf, and that when he had met earlier with the assistant district attorney he had told the prosecutor that he wanted to go home in exchange for his testimony. Bennett also testified on cross-examination that he could have accessed Mitchell's cell, at least as long as he was with Mitchell, and that he understood that discovery included the indictment and witness statements. He agreed that Mitchell had told him that Mitchell "used plastic bags and wrapped that around Mr. Lewis's head."

During closing argument, trial counsel argued, among other things, that although Bennett claimed plastic was wrapped around Lewis's head, the evidence showed that "it was tape. It wasn't plastic bags, it was tape." She argued that Bennett got the incorrect detail that it was bags from Mitchell's discovery, and maintained that Bennett had "testified that he had access to [Mitchell's] cell." She argued that Bennett's knowledge of "the wound

being in the shape of a three or a ‘W’ " also came from Mitchell's discovery. She asserted that "13 years of [Bennett's] life he's been in prison. And he told you he would do anything to go home."

(a) Mitchell claims that his trial counsel was ineffective in failing to investigate and then expose the circumstances of the case pending against Bennett in ...