Jason Rea (left) and Don Samuel. (Photos: John Disney/ALM)

Criminal defense attorney Don Samuel of Garland, Samuel & Loeb has argued before the Georgia Supreme Court many times, but this one was different.

Samuel has helped a long list of celebrity clients defeat murder charges. His most famous may be Jim Williams, the Savannah antiques dealer whose story was told in the book and movie "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." Williams was tried four times on charges of shooting his assistant and lover Danny Hansford—played by a young Jude Law in the movie—before being acquitted in the last trial.

Samuel's many appearances before the high court have been for the appellant seeking a new trial or a reversal of a conviction. On Tuesday, at the high court's first oral arguments in the new Nathan Deal Judicial Center, Samuel was there for the first time representing the appellee.

Samuel's client, Antiwan Lane, was accused of hiring a hitman to kill Hector Gonzalez. The star witness against him was the admitted hitman, Kevin Stallworth, who testified that Lane hired him for $10,000. But Stallworth said he made a mistake and instead shot Gonzalez's cousin, Ivan Perez—"like five times," according to the state's brief—while Perez was waiting outside his cousin's apartment for Gonzalez to come home. Perez wanted to borrow his cousin's car. Stallworth drove up in a silver BMW he said was borrowed from Lane, shot and fled. But he dropped his phone. A witness picked it up and handed it over to the police, who tracked it to Stallworth and arrested him. Stallworth made a deal to plead guilty and testify against Lane.

Lane was convicted of murder and other charges in a trial before longtime DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Clarence Seeliger in April 2013. After the verdict, Seeliger sentenced Lane to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

But later, following a hearing and a review of new defense counsel's claims that the trial was unfair, Seeliger granted Lane's motion for a new trial. DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston appealed Seeliger's order.

On Tuesday, assistant district attorney Jason Rea argued for the state, saying that whatever errors happened in the trial were harmless.

"We are asking today for the court to reverse the trial court's order of a new trial in this case," Rea said. "We believe the order is deficient."

Rea and Samuel clashed over whether the errors in the trial were harmless. A key issue was the testimony of a police detective corroborating the hitman's story with a hearsay account of another potential hitman—who had been shot and killed himself by the time of trial—saying Lane had tried to hire him to kill Gonzalez.

Besides being hearsay, it just wasn't true. "It was the exact opposite of the truth," Samuel said—with no argument from the state on that point. "The effect of that is it enhances Stallworth's credibility. Stallworth is a truth teller, right? And, second, it implicates Lane in a murder for hire. And both of them are a lie."

Another trial error Samuel alleged was the admission of similar transaction evidence of other hits that turned out to be totally unrelated to Lane.

The case brought up so many errors that the justices asked the lawyers for supplemental briefing on another question: whether Georgia should abandon its "cumulative error rule."

"The cumulative error rule, when it is enforced inflexibly, provides that all errors raised on appeal must be reviewed in isolation and considered separately in deciding whether the error warrants granting a new trial, either under the plain error, or harmless error tests," Samuel said in his supplemental brief. "This Court, therefore, should explicitly adopt a thoughtful, flexible approach that provides that blinders should never be worn by an appellate court: when the court determines that several errors rendered a trial unfair or resulted in a verdict for which there is a lack of confidence, then a new trial should be granted. When, on the contrary, there are numerous errors raised, none of which compounded another and none of which resulted in a trial that was unfair, the judgment should be affirmed."

Samuel called the rule "silly and impractical" in the brief and said it "does not reflect the reality of trials or appeals."

In person, Samuel told the justices the rule is "nothing to boast." He said he researched the subject and could not find another state or federal court that had such a rule.

In any case, Samuel argued that Lane should have a new trial.

Samuel also made an unusual admission. "I acknowledge that if he has a new trial, and it is a fair trial, it's possible Mr. Lane will be convicted again."

In support of his argument to throw out the rule against cumulative error, Samuel asked the justices to remember that the cumulative effect of errors is unfairness.

"Isn't that what this court does?" Samuel asked. "Decide whether there was a fair trial?"

The case is State v. Lane, No. S19A1424.