MOULTRIE, Ga. — The Georgia Supreme Court has rejected appeals for two Colquitt County men convicted of murder five years ago.

Tobias Demere Thomas and Demetrius Tyshaun Daniels sought new trials by arguing that their attorneys, prosecutors and/or the trial judge erred in numerous ways when they and several other people were tried in 2012 as part of an alleged street gang involved in several violent incidents.

The state high court announced Wednesday that it found no such errors.

Daniels and Thomas were among 11 defendants accused in an 80-count indictment as part of the Forrest Hill Boyz, an alleged street gang. The charges spanned several incidents over about four years, and some charges applied to some of the defendants and not to others.

Four of the defendants pleaded guilty ahead of the trial in May 2012. Another defendant was tried separately because his attorney got sick and had to be replaced about a month before the trial.

Thomas and Daniels received life sentences in connection with their convictions.

Retired Dougherty County Superior Court Judge Loring Gray, who presided over the trial, sentenced Thomas, 24 at the time of the trial, to a life sentence plus 10 years in the April 25, 2009, shooting death and robbery of Bernardino Perez, 41. Perez was gunned down that night at a mobile home park on Sardis Church Road where he had gone to visit friends.

Thomas also was found guilty on all counts relating to the shooting of two men in a home invasion on Circle Road. In all, the jury found him guilty on 48 counts and not guilty on an additional 16.

Gray sentenced Daniels, 20 at the time of the trial, to a life sentence plus five years in a gun battle at Shy Manor Apartments that left 26-year-old Alvin Hunt dead.

Thomas was also charged in the Hunt case, but Gray issued a directed verdict of not guilty. The jury also found him innocent of charges in connection with a violent home invasion at the residence of Jimmy Meyers on 11th Court.

Only one of the defendants was found not guilty on all counts against him.

Daniels’ appeal

Daniels contends his counsel failed to provide effective assistance in several respects:

• He said his attorney should have moved to sever his prosecution from the others. During a hearing on Daniels’ motion for a new trial, his attorney said Daniels had rejected a favorable plea deal and if he were tried separately, one of his co-defendants might take such a deal to testify against him. In addition, since the case involved five incidents — some of which Daniels was not involved in — the attorney felt if Daniels’ name wasn’t mentioned much the jury might not associate him with any of the crimes and thus find insufficient evidence to convict him; he wouldn’t have that opportunity if tried by himself.

• Daniels said his attorney should have asked more questions during voir dire and cross-examination of witnesses. But the court said Daniels did not say what other questions during those opportunities would have brought about a different verdict.

Thomas’s appeal

Thomas contends several things, including that the evidence wasn’t sufficient to convict him.

• Thomas says the testimony of one of his alleged accomplices was uncorroborated, and state law requires further evidence to back up an alleged accomplice’s testimony. However, the court found there was sufficient corroboration — from a recorded telephone call, from other accomplices and from ballistic evidence.

• Thomas challenged the validity of the indictment on 12 of the counts against him, each accusing him of a violation of the Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act based on his involvement in other counts on which he was indicted. The court ruled the indictments were proper.

• Before the trial, Thomas moved to sever various counts of the indictment because in some counts he was charged alongside some of the other defendants, in some he was charged alongside others, and in some of the counts he wasn’t charged at all. He also moved to be tried separately from the other defendants. He suggested the jury could become confused but the court says he offered no evidence that actually happened; in fact, the jury found him not guilty of one set of charges, which the court said is evidence jurors were able to keep the incidents straight.

• Thomas alleged Gray, the trial judge, indicated he thought Thomas’s testimony was untrue in front of the jury. Thomas said Gray gave an audible grunt and threw his pen down on his desk at the end of Thomas’s testimony. The court’s review of the record led it to decide Gray’s expression did not intimate his opinion to the jury.

• Thomas said jury instructions did not include amendments he had requested. The court could not find the written request for those amendments in the trial record — but other evidence did imply they had been requested. Such requests must be made in writing, and the court judged it was Thomas’s responsibility to ensure the trial record was accurate and complete on any issue he was appealing. In any case, the court ruled the jury instructions were sufficient under the law.

• Thomas also asserted the cumulative effect of all the alleged errors deprived him of due process, but the court ruled he had failed to demonstrate those errors.