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Smith v. State

A guard's identification of defendant as one of the gunmen, corroborated the accomplice's testimony regarding the defendant's involvement in an armed bank robbery.

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A jury found Thomas E. Smith, Jr. guilty of three counts of armed robbery and one count of aggravated assault. The trial court denied Smith’s motion for new trial, and Smith appeals. Smith challenges the sufficiency of the evidence and the denial of his motion for a continuance. Smith also asserts that he received ineffective assistance of counsel. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

On appeal, Smith no longer enjoys a presumption of innocence, and the evidence must be viewed in a light most favorable to the jury’s verdict.1 When so considered, the evidence established that, on October 25, 1999, Smith and Hayworth Gorham robbed a branch of the Citizens Trust Bank. As the robbery commenced, Smith pointed a 9mm handgun at the bank security guard and ordered him to surrender his firearm. The guard complied, and Smith then brandished both weapons. Meanwhile, Gorham jumped atop a teller counter and demanded currency in large denominations from several tellers. Smith and Gorham escaped in a car parked nearby. As he fled, Smith dropped a baseball cap that he was wearing. The bank robbery remained unsolved for several months.

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