ATLANTA — Colquitt County Superior Court must reconsider whether the counsel for Alexander Woods III was ineffective during his 2013 murder trial, the Georgia Supreme Court ordered today, overturning the trial court’s denial of Woods’ motion for a new trial. 

Woods, who was convicted in the deaths of five people during a 2004 incident, claimed his attorney failed to adequately discredit the co-defendant who testified against him, according to a summary of the opinion released by the state Supreme Court.

On Nov. 8, 2004, three children from the Resendez family arrived home from school to find the bodies of their parents, Jaime and Katrina Resendez, shot to death. Sheriff’s deputies and emergency medical technicians arrived at the home, just outside the city of Moultrie, and discovered three additional victims: Katrina Resendez’s mother, the family housekeeper and the Resendezes’ youngest child — a toddler. 

The court said the investigation by the Colquitt County Sheriff’s Department and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation initially pointed to Jerry Johnny Thompson and Thompson’s “enforcer,” Anthony “Amp” Davis, as suspects in the murders. Thompson was involved in a drug smuggling and dealing operation with Jaime Resendez. In January 2005, Davis was shot to death and his body set on fire. At the time of Woods’ trial, Davis’ murder was still unsolved. 

In 2006, Thompson was indicted for the Resendez murders. In 2011, after Woods was indicted, Thompson pled guilty to one murder count and was sentenced to life in prison, with sentencing delayed on the four remaining counts pending his testimony in Woods’ trial, the court summary reported. 

After his May 2013 jury trial, Woods was convicted of five counts of malice murder and given five consecutive life sentences, the high court said. During that trial, Thompson was the state’s principal witness and the only witness to directly identify Woods as a participant in the murders. Thompson testified that he and Davis went to the Resendezes’ home in 2004 because they planned to scare Jaime Resendez into calling their drug supplier, to whom Resendez owed large sums of money. According to Thompson, Davis involved Woods in the plan to confront the Resendezes because Woods was Davis’ “homeboy.” Just a few days after Woods’ conviction, Thompson was sentenced to life in prison on the remaining four murder counts in his indictment, to run concurrently with his original life sentence. 

In his motion for a new trial, Woods raised nine different instances of ineffective assistance of counsel, the court summary said. Among those instances was his counsel’s alleged failure to use available documents to discredit Thompson, including Thompson’s alleged confessions to the murders that did not mention or identify Woods and the state’s notice of intent to seek the death penalty against Thompson, which could have motivated Thompson’s testimony against Woods. 

At the 2019 hearing on Woods’ motion for a new trial, Woods’ appellate counsel questioned his trial counsel about their awareness and possession of the Thompson documents. Woods’ trial counsel repeatedly testified they had never seen the Thompson documents before. The state’s counsel objected to the introduction of the Thompson documents, arguing they were hearsay and had not been authenticated. 

The trial court ultimately excluded the documents at the hearing but did not specify the basis for its decision, the state Supreme Court said. In its order denying Woods’ motion for new trial, the trial court did not address the authentication of the documents or whether Woods’ trial counsel was deficient, instead concluding only that Woods failed to show prejudice — that the outcome of his trial probably would have been different but for his counsel’s alleged deficiency. 

But if all alleged deficiencies are assumed, the trial court erred in finding that Woods failed to show prejudice, according to the unanimous Supreme Court opinion issued today. 

“[H]ere, by assuming deficiency, the trial court assumed that all of Woods’ assertions with regard to the Thompson documents are true, including that they are authentic and were available to his trial counsel, and that trial counsel had no valid strategic reason not to use them for impeachment,” Presiding Justice Michael P. Boggs wrote in the unanimous opinion. “And the trial court also assumed the validity of Woods’ other claims of deficiency unrelated to the Thompson documents. In light of all these assumptions, Woods has shown prejudice, at least as a cumulative result of all the deficiencies he alleges, and the trial court therefore erred in concluding otherwise.” 

The Supreme Court has sent the case back to the trial court for a new hearing.