Harris v. State

Summary

The Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed Harris’s convictions and the denial of his motion for new trial. It held that the trial court exceeded the limited scope of the prior remand by considering new ineffective-assistance and newly discovered-evidence claims, but that the appellate court could address Harris’s claims of trial error. The court found the closing-argument claim unpreserved, the jury-note instruction not plainly erroneous, any error in admitting some text messages harmless, and the similar-transaction evidence properly admitted.