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Hatfield v. State

The defendant failed to show that the outcome of his trial would have been different absent his trial counsel's deficiency in failing to investigate whether the defendant was suffering from a delusional compulsion at the time of the crimes, since a psychologist who examined the defendant on remand determined that he had the mental capacity to distinguish between right and wrong and he was not suffering from a delusional compulsion.

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After a jury trial, Wesley Randall Hatfield was convicted of rape OCGA § 16-6-1 and reckless conduct OCGA § 16-5-60. In an earlier appeal from that conviction before this Court, Hatfield challenged the trial court’s denial of his motion for new trial, claiming that his lawyer failed to perform an adequate investigation into whether Hatfield was suffering a delusional compulsion at the time of the rape,1 and that, as a result, he was deprived of the effective assistance of counsel. Finding that Hatfield’s counsel was deficient, this Court, in an unreported opinion, vacated Hatfield’s conviction and remanded the case to the trial court for consideration of whether Hatfield was prejudiced by his counsel’s deficient performance. Hatfield v. State, __Ga. App.__ Case No. A12A0597, decided on July 13, 2012. On remand, the trial court determined, after a hearing, that trial counsel’s deficient performance had not prejudiced Hatfield, and entered an order re-instating the original conviction and sentence. Hatfield appeals from that order.

Hatfield’s sole enumeration on appeal is that the trial court erred by concluding, upon remand, that he was not prejudiced by trial counsel’s failure to investigate adequately the possibility that Hatfield was suffering from a delusional compulsion at the time of his offense.

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