A few days ago, the Supreme Court of Georgia issued an opinion in a really interesting case: Anderson v. State, 2026 WL 3209849 (Ga. 2026). In Anderson, the court had to decide whether trial counsel in a malice murder/car crash case was ineffective in failing to retain an accident reconstruction expert.
The case involved Joshua Edward Anderson being convicted of malice murder after fatally striking Kevin Lamarius Marshall with his truck. This crash happened after the two men had fought at a Fourth of July party at the Browning residence.
The record shows that the Browning residence was located on a narrow, dead-end road with a blind curve. Security camera footage from a nearby home showed that Marshall walked down the road leading away from the Browning residence and around the blind curve. The footage further showed that, shortly thereafter, Anderson drove his truck in the same direction and rounded the curve at a high rate of speed.
Anderson testified that he was “going very fast for conditions,” that he rounded the blind curve, and that he “immediately slammed on [his] brakes and veered to the left side of the road to get out of the way” as soon as he “noticed [Marshall] was in the middle of the road” “200 or so feet” in front of him. The truck slammed into Marshall at over 50 mph. Anderson testified that he “did the best [he] could to avoid [hitting Marshall],” but that he was unable to do so because “200 feet really comes quick when you’re going fast,” Marshall “wasn’t moving out of the road,” and there were obstructions on “the left side of the road.” According to Anderson, after hitting Marshall, he “panicked” and drove away from the scene.
After Anderson was convicted, he claimed ineffective assistance of counsel based on his trial attorney failing to retain an accident reconstruction expert. As support for his appeal,
Anderson called an accident reconstruction expert to testify about the amount of time Anderson had to react between seeing and striking Marshall. Relying on the location of the curve, the rate of speed that the surveillance footage showed Marshall and Anderson were traveling down the road, and a person’s ordinary perception/reaction time of 1.5 to 1.6 seconds, the accident reconstruction expert testified that, after subtracting the perception/reaction time, Anderson had “[a] little less than a second” to take evasive action and avoid the collision. The expert further testified that evasive actions generally include changing direction, slowing down, or stopping, and that there was not enough time for Anderson to come to a complete stop before reaching Marshall.
In rejecting Anderson’s appeal, the Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that
it was undisputed at trial both that there was a blind curve in the road and that Marshall was struck by Anderson’s vehicle shortly after Anderson rounded the curve. Several pieces of evidence showed that Anderson was traveling at a high rate of speed when the collision occurred, including the surveillance footage, Anderson’s own testimony, Anderson’s admission to Kendra that he was driving 50 miles per hour, and the medical examiner’s testimony about the speed of the vehicle that collided with Marshall. And both the neighbor’s testimony that he heard screeching tires just before the collision and Anderson’s testimony that he slammed the brakes supported a finding that Anderson unsuccessfully attempted to avoid hitting Marshall. Based on this evidence, trial counsel argued in closing that Anderson did not have enough time to avoid hitting Marshall after rounding the curve and thus that Anderson lacked the intent to kill.
As the decision to call an expert witness is generally within trial counsel’s discretion, Anderson’s trial counsel was not deficient for making the reasonable decision to advance the “unavoidable collision” argument through evidence, such as eyewitness testimony and security footage, other than expert testimony.
I don’t know that I’m on board with the court’s ruling. Of course, I wasn’t there for the trial, but, for me, the expert’s testimony added a new dimension to the defense and very well could have moved the needle on the jury’s verdict.
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