Harvey Holliday was convicted on three counts of theft by deception. Following the denial of his amended motion for new trial, he appeals. All five of his enumerations of error concern the use of an interpreter who translated the testimony of three Spanish-speaking witnesses at trial. We find no legal error with respect to use of the interpreter or the interpreter’s performance at trial. Moreover, even if some deficiency or error occurred by virtue of the interpreter’s translation, we conclude that there is no reasonable probability that the deficiency or error contributed to the jury’s verdict. We therefore affirm. Construed in favor of the verdict, evidence was presented through the testimony of two victims that they hired Holliday to handle immigration matters after he represented himself as an attorney to them. Holliday was not an attorney. With the assistance of a Spanish-speaking interpreter, the first victim testified that upon the referral of Holliday’s secretary, he met with Holliday and “hired him to handle a family package.” He believed that Holliday would arrange for legal residency for his wife and several other family members. Holliday told the victim that he was a “good attorney” who handled “a lot of cases” involving immigration matters. He believed that he was “receiving help from a regular licensed State of Georgia attorney.” Over the course of several months, between October 1996 and January 1998, the victim paid Holliday approximately $6100 for his services. After a period of time passed and these tasks were not accomplished, however, the victim asked Holliday for explanations about the delay, and “his answers were always evasive. . . . He would say that he was working on it and that now he was going to really put a lot of effort into it. And, hypocritically, he would embrace me. And then he would get down on his knees and he would say that he was really going to work on it.”
Finally, dissatisfied with Holliday’s work, the victim enlisted the help of an English-speaking acquaintance to act as an interpreter. Along with two other individuals, they went to Holliday’s office, and the victim asked Holliday to show him his case file. The victim wanted “to see how our case was going with immigration, because he never would give us anything.” Holliday responded in an aggressive manner. “He was like a person who was going to attack next thing,” and “in a very ugly way, he threw us out of his office. He had already thrown us out of his office once before.” The victim never spoke to Holliday again and obtained assistance with his immigration needs from at least two other attorneys. At the time of trial, which occurred in January 2001, although he had obtained some results, his “dealings in regard to his family’s status” were ongoing. When asked whether he received from Holliday what he “bargained for,” the victim replied that he did not receive “even nice treatment or any kind of proof of the work that he was supposed to be doing.”
