Marcus Leshae Newsome was charged with murder and felony murder in the shooting death of Lawrence Chambliss as well as four counts of armed robbery and six counts of aggravated assault. He was convicted of all counts and now appeals, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence, the admission of an alleged hearsay statement from an unavailable co-indictee, the failure to exclude alleged similar transaction evidence and the effectiveness of his counsel.1 Finding no error, we affirm. However, because Newsome received two life sentences for the murder of a single victim, his sentence for felony murder must be vacated and the case remanded for the reasons that follow. 1. The jury was authorized to find that appellant was the driver of a silver two-door Honda Accord that pulled into the driveway leading to an apartment on Pebble Street in Macon. The apartment had been rented two weeks earlier by LaShonda Williams; its former residents were drug dealers. At least two men exited the Accord and threatened the three men sitting near the apartment’s entrance.2 When Williams, holding her infant in her arms, stepped outside, shots were fired at the five victims. Williams recognized co-indictee Haynes,3 whom she had known for several years, as one of her assailants and at trial identified appellant as the driver of the Accord.
Within minutes after the assailants left the Pebble Street apartment, a silver two-door Honda Accord pulled into the driveway of an apartment on Fletcher Street, approximately two miles from Pebble Street. Two men from the Accord, including one with a rifle who was identified as co-indictee Haynes by persons who knew him, entered the apartment, firing shots at the 17 or more men who had gathered in the apartment to watch college basketball and play cards. Lawrence Chambliss was shot in the back of his arm and chest as he fled the room; he bled to death from his wounds. His nephew, Cory Pounds, was shot in the back as he fled. Pounds survived his injury and testified about seeing a third assailant armed with a handgun coming around the back of the apartment. Victims Faulks, Grayer and Milford, who were in the front bedroom, and McClinton, who was near the front door, were robbed at gunpoint by Haynes and the other assailant.
