Williams v. State

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to modification resulting from motions for reconsideration under Supreme Court Rule 27, the Court’s reconsideration, and editorial revisions by the Reporter of Decisions. The version of the opinion published in the Advance Sheets for the Georgia Reports, designated as the “Final Copy,” will replace any prior version on the Court’s website and docket. A bound volume of the Georgia Reports will contain the final and official text of the opinion. In the Supreme Court of Georgia No. S26A1031 Michael Shareef Williams v. The State On Appeal from the Superior Court of Fulton County No. 19SC164903 Decided: September 9, 2026 PINSON, Justice. Michael Shareef Williams was convicted of malice murder and other crimes in connection with the shooting death of Sutton Tennyson. 1 On appeal, he claims that the trial court erred by fail- ing to give a limiting instruction when evidence of Williams’s 1 The crimes occurred on November 3, 2018. Tennyson was shot 13 times and died from the gunshot wounds. Shortly after, Williams was indicted for murder (Count 1), felony murder (Counts 2–4), aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (Count 5), possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony (Count 6), possession of a firearm by a convicted felon (Count 7), and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon during the commission of a felony (Count 8). In March 2022, a jury found Williams guilty on all counts. The trial court sentenced Williams to life with the possibility of parole on Count 1 and 15 years to serve consecutively on Count 8. Count 5 merged with Count 1 and Counts 6 and 7 merged with Count 8. Counts 2–4 were vacated by operation of law. Williams filed a timely motion for new trial, which was amended by new counsel in June 2023. Following a hearing in May 2024, the trial court denied Williams’s amended motion for new trial. Shortly after that, Williams filed a motion to vacate and re-enter the order denying his amended motion for prior convictions was admitted and that his trial counsel rendered constitutionally ineffective assistance in several ways. He also claims that the cumulative effect of these errors deprived him of a fair trial. For the reasons set out below, those claims fail, and so his convictions are affirmed. 1. Facts The evidence at trial showed the following. On the day of the murder, Carl Price, a carpenter, was at Tennyson’s home to review an estimate for carpentry work. While the men were out- side talking, a dark-colored BMW pulled up. Tennyson asked Price to “give [him] a second,” and walked over to speak to the person in the car. Price testified that the conversation between Tennyson and the person in the BMW was “somewhat loud.” He originally thought the men were just greeting each other, but then it became “somewhat contentious.” After, Tennyson walked back towards Price, and the man from the car came too. Price testified that as the men approached, he asked Tennyson, “[h]e’s not going to shoot me, is he?” to which Tennyson said, “don’t worry about him. He’s cool,” and then introduced the man as “Mike.” According to Price, Mike began asking Tennyson about where he had been because Mike had been trying to call Tennyson for over a month. Price said that Mike sounded “very angry” and Tennyson tried to tell Mike that he would “settle” with him after he finished his business with Price. Price and Tennyson returned to discussing the carpentry estimate, but Mike approached again new trial because the trial court failed to address one of his grounds for inef- fective assistance of counsel. In June 2024, the trial court vacated its previous denial of Williams’s amended motion for new trial and entered a new order denying the motion. Williams filed a timely notice of appeal in June 2024. Al- most two years later, the trial record was transmitted to this Court and the case was then docketed to the April 2026 term for a decision on the briefs. 2 and tried to engage Tennyson. Tennyson again told Mike to wait until he was finished talking to Price. Mike replied, “you’re prob- ably going to do him like you did me,” to which Tennyson said, “haven’t I always paid you?” Mike said “yeah, you have,” and then “settled down again.” At that point, Tennyson started to walk to- wards his garage to get a cabinet door as an example of what he wanted Price to make for him. When Mike saw Tennyson walking away, he said, “where are you going? You’re not going anywhere. I’m not letting you out of my sight.” Tennyson kept walking, so Mike and Price followed him. After Tennyson opened his garage, Price saw Mike pull out a gun, step forward, and shoot Tennyson. Price testified that he saw bullets hit Tennyson in the back and that he heard “10 bullet shots” before he ran away. Price took shelter at a neighbor’s house and told her to call 911. When the police interviewed Price, he told them that Mike was bald with a “big head” and had a “crooked” tooth, “little moles on his face,” and a “scruffy looking” beard. Price also testified that Mike was wearing “tortoise shell glasses” with a “rim [that] kind of goes up a little.”2 Officers tried to get Price to identify Mike from pictures of six men they showed him, but he was not able to do so. When asked about this at trial, Price testified that he felt “stressed” at the time because it was right after the shooting. One of Tennyson’s neighbors, Frank Pickens, was able to identify Williams. He testified that after hearing “five or six gun- shots,” he looked out his window and saw a man run to get into a dark-colored “luxury car,” either “a BMW or a Mercedes,” and then leave at a “high rate of speed.” Pickens described the man as a black male with facial hair, wearing “some type of dark cap.” 2 At trial, defense counsel showed Price his statement to police after the shooting where he said that Mike had black glasses and had some type of cap on. 3 When he was interviewed a few days after the shooting, Pickens reviewed six photographs and selected the photograph of Wil- liams as the man he saw. At the scene, officers picked up the victim’s phone, from which they were later able to extract messages between him and Williams. They also collected 12 cartridge casings that an expert later concluded were all fired by the same gun. And from nearby license-plate readers and surveillance cameras, the police learned that the dark-colored car seen leaving the incident was a BMW registered to Williams. The police obtained an arrest warrant for Williams and sent the fugitive task force to search for him. While executing the warrant, task-force officers went to Williams’s residence and then “called in a tip” to the investigating officers that a BMW that might match the one they were searching for was parked in the garage. Officers searched the vehicle and discovered that alt- hough the license plate had been removed, the vehicle identifica- tion number matched the tag number picked up by the license plate readers. Inside the car, the officers found an insurance reg- istration card in Williams’s name. 2. Limiting Instruction At trial, Williams’s prior convictions of eluding law enforce- ment, aggravated manslaughter, possession of a dangerous weapon, and possession of hollow nose bullets were admitted into evidence. Williams claims that the trial court erred by not giving the jury a limiting instruction when those convictions were ad- mitted. He concedes that because he did not object or ask for a limiting instruction when those convictions were introduced, this claim is reviewed only for plain error. To establish plain error, 4 Williams must show that the trial court committed a clear or ob- vious error that was not affirmatively waived, and that the error likely affected the outcome of his trial. State v. Kelly, 290 Ga. 29, 33 (2011). If he makes that showing, then we have discretion to remedy the error if it “seriously affected the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings.” Dennis v. State, 324 Ga. 440, 443–44 (2026) (cleaned up). This claim fails. We have explained before that it is the “better practice” to give a limiting instruction about the jury’s con- sideration of a certified copy of a prior felony introduced by the State for purposes of establishing elements of charged crimes, but if the defendant does not ask for such an instruction, failing to give one “is not grounds for reversal.” Hudson v. State, 277 Ga. 581, 584 (2004). See also Head v. State, 262 Ga. 795, 798 (1993). Williams did not ask for a limiting instruction when the State sought to admit the copies of his convictions to prove the required elements of Counts 7 and 8, (possession of a firearm by a convicted felon), so the trial court was not required to give one sua sponte. Thus, Williams cannot establish that it was clear and obvious er- ror not to give such an instruction when the records were admit- ted. 3 3. Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Williams claims that his trial counsel was constitutionally 3 We note that the trial court’s final instructions to the jury before de- liberations included the limiting instruction that Williams requested during the charge conference, which stated that some evidence may be considered against the defendant “for the sole issue, or purpose” of Counts 7 and 8, “for which the evidence is limited and not for any other purpose.” We presume that qualified jurors follow the court’s instructions, and Williams has presented no evidence to rebut that presumption. See Morris v. State, 308 Ga. 520, 530 (2020) (citation omitted). 5 ineffective in several ways. To prevail on these claims, Williams must establish both that his counsel’s performance was constitu- tionally deficient and that counsel’s deficient performance caused him prejudice. Strickland v. Washington, 466 US 668, 687 (1984); Flakes v. State, 323 Ga. 477, 491 (2026). To establish that counsel was deficient, Williams must show that his lawyer performed her duties “in an objectively unreasonable way, considering all the circumstances and in light of prevailing professional norms.” Washington v. State, 313 Ga. 771, 773 (2022) (quotation marks omitted). And to establish that he was prejudiced, Williams must show that but for counsel’s deficiency, there is a reasonable prob- ability that the outcome of his trial would have been different. Id. (a) Failure to Stipulate to Williams’s Prior Convictions Before trial, the State offered Williams the opportunity to stipulate that he is a convicted felon for purposes of proving the requisite elements of the felon-in-possession charges against him, rather than having the State introduce copies of those convic- tions. His counsel declined. Assuming without deciding that counsel was deficient for not stipulating to Williams’s felon status, his claim fails because he has not established that substituting a stipulation for the in- troduction of the copies of his prior convictions likely would have led to a different outcome. This is so for two reasons: Williams has not shown that the difference between stipulating to his status and allowing copies of his convictions into evidence was at all sig- nificant, and the evidence against him was quite strong. As to the first point, Williams has not shown that any spe- cifics of the convictions that were admitted were “likely to inflame the jury’s passions and raise the risk of a conviction based on im- proper considerations.” Jackson v. State, 317 Ga. 95, 103 (2023) 6 (quotation marks omitted). Indeed, Williams’s prior convictions were for less serious offenses — fleeing from law enforcement, ag- gravated manslaughter, and possession of a dangerous weapon and hollow nose bullets — than the crimes he was charged with here, which included malice murder. See also Parker v. State, 309 Ga. 736, 745 (2020) (in the context of explaining when a trial court may abuse its discretion in failing to allow a defendant to stipu- late to his status as a convicted felon, explaining that “this Court has held that even violent crimes, crimes involving firearms, and drug offenses were not likely to inflame the jury's passions in murder cases”). Williams points out that the records admitted into evidence to prove his status as a convicted felon also indi- cated that Williams was charged with murder and possession of a small quantity of drugs. But that does not change the prejudice calculus: those same records showed that those charges were not part of his final convictions, the details of those charges were not brought out through testimony or argument, the State did not present any details about those charges or the prior convictions when they were admitted, and as noted above, a limiting instruc- tion was given before the jury was dismissed to deliberate. Moreover, the evidence against Williams was strong. An eyewitness, Carl Price, testified that while he was at the victim’s home, a man that he was introduced to as “Mike” pulled up in a dark-colored BMW, that “Mike” and the victim got into a heated discussion about money the victim owed “Mike,” and that “Mike” shot the victim. Another eyewitness, Frank Pickens, testified that he saw a man whom he later identified as Williams flee the scene in a dark-colored luxury car that was either a BMW or a Mer- cedes. Video surveillance and license plate readers showed a dark-colored BMW entering the victim’s neighborhood and later leaving at a high rate of speed. The BMW was registered to Wil- liams, and officers found a car at Williams’s house that matched 7 the description of the one that witnesses described from the scene. And text messages between Williams’s and the victim’s phones show that the men were discussing money issues, which corrobo- rated Price’s statements that Williams and the victim were argu- ing about money before the shooting. Given the content of the records of his prior convictions and the strength of the evidence against him, Williams has failed to establish a reasonable probability that the outcome of his trial would have been different had his trial counsel stipulated to his status as a convicted felon. See, e.g., Prickett v. State, 314 Ga. 435, 439–40 (2022) (holding that defendant did not show he was prej- udiced when counsel failed to stipulate to defendant’s prior con- viction when his prior conviction was identified only in passing “when the prosecutor introduced, without objection, a copy of the conviction,” the evidence against the defendant was strong, and the court gave a limiting instruction before jury deliberations); Chavez v. State, 307 Ga. 804, 809–10 (2020) (holding that appel- lant was not prejudiced when the evidence against him was strong, the State did not bring out details of the prior offenses and only entered a copy of the prior disposition without comment, and it was not clear that the prosecutor made an improper propensity argument when referencing the prior disposition in closing); Bal- lard v. State, 297 Ga. 248, 252–53 (2015) (holding that trial coun- sel’s failure to stipulate to his felon status did not prejudice the defendant given the “overwhelming evidence of his guilt”). So this claim fails. (b) Failure to Seek a Limiting Instruction Williams claims that trial counsel was ineffective for fail- ing to seek a limiting instruction at the time the State introduced evidence of Williams’s prior convictions. This claim is procedur- ally barred. A claim for ineffective assistance of counsel must be 8 raised at the earliest practicable moment, Glover v. State, 266 Ga. 183, 184 (1996), which is at the motion-for-new-trial stage if a de- fendant has new counsel at that time, Moore v. State, 311 Ga. 506, 513 (2021). Williams had new counsel at that time, and his motion for new trial did not include a claim of ineffective assistance based on trial counsel’s failure to request a limiting instruction when Williams’s prior convictions were admitted. Nor did Williams’s appellate counsel make this argument at the hearing on his amended motion. So this claim is barred. Martin v. State, 306 Ga. 538, 546 (2019); Grier v. State, 305 Ga. 882, 885 (2019); Jones v. State, 294 Ga. 501, 503 (2014). (c) Failure to Object to Hearsay Testimony Williams claims that his counsel was deficient for failing to object to hearsay testimony from Price and Detective Smith about the name of the shooter. At trial, Price testified that the victim introduced him to a man named “Mike” who arrived at the vic- tim’s home while Price was present. Detective Smith also testified that Price said the shooter’s name was Mike. At the motion-for- new-trial hearing, Williams’s trial counsel explained that she did not think that testimony warranted an objection because she did not realize it was a hearsay issue. This claim as to Detective Smith’s testimony is procedur- ally barred. As we just explained, a defendant must raise a claim of ineffective assistance at the earliest practicable time — here, during the motion-for-new-trial stage after Williams obtained new counsel — or it is procedurally barred. But Williams’s new counsel failed to raise any claim at that time that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to object to Detective Smith’s testimony on hearsay grounds. So this claim is barred. As for Williams’s argument about Price’s testimony, which 9 was raised in his amended motion for new trial, Williams’s coun- sel was not deficient for failing to object to it because a hearsay objection would have been meritless, and counsel is not deficient for failing to make a meritless objection. Walker v. State, 306 Ga. 637, 645 (2019). Even assuming that Price’s testimony was hear- say, see OCGA § 24-8-801(c), Price’s statement that Tennyson in- troduced the shooter as “Mike” was admissible as a present sense impression, an exception to the hearsay rule. OCGA § 24-8-803(1). A statement may be admitted under this exception if it “de- scribe[s] or explain[s] an event or condition that is personally wit- nessed by the declarant and is essentially contemporaneous to the statement.” Downer v. State, 314 Ga. 617, 630–31 (2022) (citing OCGA § 24-8-803(1) (including as an exception to the hearsay rule “[a] statement describing or explaining an event or condition made while the declarant was perceiving the event or condition or immediately thereafter”)). See also Varner v. State, 306 Ga. 726, 731 (2019). That test is satisfied by Tennyson’s statement introducing the shooter — a person he was personally perceiving — as “Mike.” See Downer, 314 Ga. at 630–31 (trial court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that a declarant’s statement that he was on the phone with the defendant fell within the pre- sent-sense-impression exception to the hearsay rule). So, because a hearsay objection to introducing that statement was not likely to succeed, this claim fails. Hernandez v. State, 323 Ga. 867, 873 (2026). 4. Cumulative Error Williams claims that counsel’s various instances of defi- cient performance resulted in cumulative error that deprived him of a fair trial. But we have only assumed (without deciding) one instance of deficient performance, so there is no cumulative error to consider, and this claim fails. Smith v. State, 320 Ga. 825, 839 10 (2025). Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur. 11