This is the second appearance of this case in this Court. Floyd Jones was found guilty of malice murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime for the fatal shooting of his common-law wife Priscilla Carter Jones, and this Court affirmed his convictions but remanded the case to the trial court for an evidentiary hearing and a determination of his claim that his trial attorney provided ineffective assistance, which was raised for the first time on direct appeal by appointed appellate counsel. See Jones v. State , 275 Ga. 156 563 SE2d 835 2002. Following a hearing, the trial court rejected Jones’s contention that he was entitled to a new trial because his trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance and Jones appeals. For the reasons which follow, we affirm. As noted in this Court’s prior opinion, on October 7, 1995, Jones’s wife suffered a fatal hemorrhage as the result of a twelve gauge shotgun blast to her mouth. Around 3:00 a.m. following the shooting, an obviously upset Jones went to the homes of two neighbors and asked to use a telephone; he told each neighbor that his wife was dead, and to one of them that “Priscilla’s face is gone” and her “brains are over the place.” Neither neighbor had a telephone, so Jones went to the home of Catherine Deever. After Jones also told her that his wife was dead, Deever called 911. Jones first told Deever that the shotgun had fired while his wife was playing with it and later told her that he and his wife had struggled over the shotgun and that it had gone off while he was trying to wrest it from her. Police officers found a seemingly intoxicated Jones in the road in front of the residence; Jones stated to the officers, “She killed herself, I didn’t do it, she killed herself.”
Jones’s wife was found sitting on a couch, leaning to the side with an obvious injury to the side of her face. There were beer cans, malt liquor containers, and a gin bottle on the table in front of her; she had a pair of scissors in her lap; and an old shotgun was leaning against the wall not far from her body. The shotgun contained a number eight bird shot shell, and pellets later removed from the wife’s body were consistent with number eight bird shot.
