In June 2000, a Richmond County jury found Jamie Verdree guilty of multiple counts of armed robbery, aggravated assault, kidnapping, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, and use of a firearm by a convicted felon. Verdree’s counsel filed a timely motion for new trial, but the trial court did not conduct a hearing on the motion until July 2008 and did not issue a ruling denying the motion until February 2009. Verdree appeals, contending the trial court erred in admitting testimony that violated his constitutional right to confrontation, erred in admitting other evidence, gave the jury an improper instruction, and improperly sentenced him. He also argues that the eight-year delay between his motion for new trial and the hearing thereon violated his due process rights, that he received ineffective assistance of trial and appellate counsel, and that the evidence was insufficient to support his convictions. For the following reasons, we reverse the denial of Verdree’s motion for new trial and remand this case to the trial court. Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict,1 the evidence presented showed that someone committed three armed robberies of Taco Bell restaurants in Augusta between November 1997 and March 1998. During each of the robberies, the robber walked into the restaurant as soon as it opened, threatened the restaurant employees with a silver handgun, forced them into the walk-in refrigerator, ordered an employee to open the safe and give him the keys to the registers, and then fled the scene with cash. Several of the victims of the first two robberies testified that, although the robber had part of his face covered with a stocking cap, they could see that the robber appeared to be missing a front tooth. Investigators also obtained surveillance videotapes of each of the robberies and were able to extract still photographs of the robber’s face from the videotapes of the last two robberies.
Based on information obtained from a variety of sources, an investigator with the Richmond County Sheriff’s Department began to focus his investigation on Jamie Verdree and obtained a search warrant for Verdree’s mother’s home. While executing the warrant, the investigator showed Ms. Verdree still photographs from the robberies and asked her if the pictures were of Jamie Verdree or one of Verdree’s two brothers. Ms. Verdree replied that Jamie and one of his brothers were identical twins, but she could tell the man in the pictures was Jamie, because he was the twin who had a broken front tooth and you could see the broken tooth in one of the pictures.
