Following a jury trial, Thomas Lincoln Sims was convicted of two counts of child molestation.1 The trial court sentenced him as a recidivist to 30 years in confinement. Sims appeals from the denial of his motion for a new trial, contending that the trial court erred by questioning the victim and by charging the jury on expert testimony, and that trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance of counsel. We affirm, but remand to the trial court for a determination of Sims’s claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict,2 the record shows that on three separate occasions between January 1, 2004, and August 31, 2004, Sims inappropriately touched his ten-year-old stepdaughter B. H. while her mother was at church. B. H. testified that on two occasions, Sims came into her bedroom, wearing only his boxer shorts, and touched her breasts and vagina on top of her pajamas. The third time, Sims touched B. H.’s breasts and vagina under her clothing, and exposed himself to her. B. H. testified that the three incidents occurred at the home she shared with her mother, brother, and Sims, in Locust Grove, Henry County. B. H. also testified about two other encounters with Sims. On one occasion, B. H. was sitting on Sims’s lap driving his car down a dirt road when Sims unbuttoned her pants and “started messing with . . . the lower part of her body.” On the other occasion, Sims took B. H. took a “bootleg house” in Spalding County, removed her clothing, and tried unsuccessfully to put his penis in her vagina. B. H. also described a sixth encounter with Sims, which occurred at her grandmother’s home in Lithonia, Dekalb County. B. H. told her mother, Cheryl Bennett, about the incidents and Bennett called the police. When Bennett questioned Sims about the incidents, Sims told her that he did it and then turned himself into police.
As similar transaction evidence, the state introduced the testimony of Sims’s biological daughter, S. S., who testified that on more than one occasion in 1991, when she was eight or nine years old, Sims touched her vagina with his hands and penis, and had intercourse with her. S. S. testified that she contracted a sexually transmitted disease from her father. Sims pled guilty to one count of child molestation involving S. S. and was sentenced to twelve years the state nolle prossed a charge of aggravated child molestation.
