Laing v. State

The trial court did not err in failing to charge the jury on accomplice corroboration, because the state relied on other evidence apart from the accomplice's testimony.

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Following a jury trial, Jordan Laing was convicted of armed robbery.1 He appeals, arguing that the trial court erred by refusing his request to poll the jury and by failing to give a particular jury instruction. Laing also alleges that he received ineffective assistance of counsel. We affirm, for reasons that follow. Construed in favor of the verdict,2 the evidence shows that on February 17, 2007, Laing picked up Michael Gilbert and Major Chapman in Laing’s mother’s minivan and drove to a Publix shopping center. In the parking lot, the three men discussed robbing a customer at the automated teller machine “ATM”. Laing then drove the minivan to an apartment complex immediately behind the shopping center because “he did not want his mom’s car to be seen.” The three men walked through a wooded path between the complex and Publix and then waited near the ATM for approximately ten minutes before Michael Dorsey and Bernard Horton arrived in a car. Dorsey, the passenger, exited the vehicle, and approached the ATM. Gilbert, whose face was partially covered by a black bandana, ran up to Dorsey with a gun in his hand and forced him to retrieve money from the ATM. Laing and Chapman watched from a distance and then ran, along with Gilbert, into the wooded area behind the Publix.

Horton, who witnessed the entire incident, called 911. After Dorsey returned to the car, Horton drove to the entrance of the apartment complex behind the grocery store, where he saw Gilbert and Laing get into a gray minivan. The police, who arrived at the scene shortly thereafter, stopped the minivan in the apartment complex minutes after the incident; Gilbert was driving the van, and Laing was located in the back of the vehicle, from which the police recovered a black bandana and a handgun.

Laing v. State

The trial court did not err in failing to charge the jury on accomplice corroboration, because the state relied on other evidence apart from the accomplice's testimony.

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