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Rivers v. State

The defendant offered nothing more than speculation for the proposition that, had trial counsel been successful in introducing impeachment evidence, there was a reasonable probability that the jury would have acquitted the defendant on at least one charge.

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In 2006, a DeKalb County jury convicted Timothy Rivers of malice murder and related offenses arising out of the shooting death of James Mogardo. Rivers admits killing Mogardo but claims he did so in self-defense. Rivers’s sole claim on appeal is that he received constitutionally ineffective assistance of counsel because his trial attorney failed to discover and introduce the criminal record of one of the witnesses for the prosecution. Finding no merit in Rivers’s claim, we affirm.1 1. The evidence presented at trial would have enabled a rational finder of fact to conclude as follows. On the evening of March 4, 2006, Brittnee Heard and Ashley Mata concocted a plan to commit a series of robberies to raise bail money for Heard’s boyfriend. They enlisted the assistance of Timothy Rivers, a friend of Heard’s boyfriend. The plan was simple. Seventeen-year-old Mata would distract a man in a parking lot with her sexual advances. Rivers would then approach and demand all his money, and Heard would drive the getaway car, her boyfriend’s red Saturn.

Rivers and his compatriots put their plan into effect later that night and into the early morning hours of March 5, 2006. They committed two successful robberies —the first in the parking lot of a nightclub, the second in the parking lot of a restaurant —that netted them a total of $90. However, Heard needed more money to satisfy her boyfriend’s bail, so the three set out again.

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