A Screven County jury convicted Theron Hankerson of armed robbery, OCGA § 16-8-41 a; kidnapping, OCGA § 16-5-40 a; aggravated assault, OCGA § 16-5-21 a; and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, OCGA § 16-11-106 b. Hankerson appealed his conviction in December 2003. This Court remanded the case back to the trial court to consider whether Hankerson received the effective assistance of trial counsel. On remand, the trial court found that Hankerson failed to demonstrate that he received ineffective assistance at trial. We agree with the court’s conclusion and affirm Hankerson’s convictions. The facts of this case can best be summarized by Hankerson’s confession to the police, which was admitted and related to the jury at trial. The court redacted all references to Hankerson’s co-defendant, Jerry Dunbar, from the statement before it was presented to the jury.1 According to Hankerson’s confession, on the day of the robbery, he and several others were sitting around “smoking dope” when they decided to rob a liquor store. Hankerson borrowed a gun, went to a liquor store with two others, and entered the store. Hankerson made the people in the store lie down on the floor, got the money from behind the counter, tore the phone from the wall, and took a radio. After leaving the store, he went to a house and split the money among several people. Hankerson believed that he had taken about $1,200 from the store and that he had received about $350 of that amount. He returned the gun to its owner and went to his girlfriend’s house.
The trial transcript also shows that after the armed robbery in this case, Dunbar had a conversation with a third party, who asked him about the armed robbery and requested advice about committing a similar robbery. Unbeknownst to Dunbar, the third party had agreed to work as an informant for police investigators and secretly audiotaped the conversation. During the conversation, Dunbar admitted that he and Hankerson went into the liquor store, that he had a gun, that they took money and some liquor from the store, and that they forced a customer who entered the store to lie down. The record shows that, when Dunbar made the statements to the third party, he was not in custody and was not being interrogated by the police. The State played the audiotape for the jury at trial.
