Durwyn Mancill was granted habeas corpus relief after the habeas court found that Mancill’s due process rights were violated by the delay between his 1993 convictions and the 2001 affirmance of those convictions by this Court. Based on our review of the record and the habeas court’s findings of fact and conclusions of law, we hold that the habeas court erred in its ruling and accordingly reverse. Mancill was indicted in November 1992 on charges that he murdered Yolanda Lewis and Ace Johnson III. Counsel from the Fulton County Public Defenders Office FCPDO were appointed to represent him. After a trial lasting two and one-half weeks, he was convicted of both murders and the trial court on April 19, 1993 imposed two life sentences. Rather than filing a notice of appeal, he chose instead to seek a new trial and trial counsel timely filed a motion for new trial pursuant to OCGA § 5-5-40 a. It took the court reporter 17 months to complete and file the eight-volume transcript of Mancill’s trial. Mancill’s motion for new trial, as amended by Mancill’s new appellate counsel, FCPDO attorney William T. Hankins III, was heard in February 1996. However, the trial judge recused herself a month later, apparently because of a conflict created by trial counsel’s decision to run as a candidate for the judge’s seat. Within two months of her recusal, Hankins filed a second amendment to the motion for new trial. See OCGA § 5-5-40 b motion for new trial may be amended any time on or before the ruling thereon. The record reflects that over the course of the next four and one-half years, Mancill’s appellate counsel first Hankins and then FCPDO attorney Shannon Neal Weathers filed three more amendments to the motion for new trial, each amendment raising new claims, such as newly discovered evidence and error by the trial court in holding approximately 100 unrecorded, untranscribed bench conferences.
A second hearing on the motion as amended was held in September 2000. Appellate counsel Weathers presented no evidence at the hearing to support the claim that Mancill was prejudiced by the unrecorded bench conferences. See Sinns v. State , 248 Ga. 385 2 283 SE2d 479 1981 court’s failure to order recordation of bench conferences is not error absent some prejudice to defendant. Instead, after consulting with Steven Phillips, a senior staff attorney at FCPDO, counsel filed a motion to correct and complete the transcript. The motion was granted and an order subsequently extended the time for the parties to confer after Weathers was replaced by FCPDO attorney J. Jeffrey Lacy. On October 18, 2000, eleven days after granting the extension, the trial court signed an order denying the motion for new trial and holding that the motion to correct the transcript had been “abandoned.”
