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Waldrip v. Head10/11/2005
ons of being monitored, the evidence did not plausibly demonstrate that he fell short of the legal standard of competence to stand trial. See Stripling v. State, 261 Ga. 1 (3) (401 SE2d 500) (1991) (noting that a defendant is competent to stand trial if he or she is "capable of understanding the nature and object of the proceedings and is capable of assisting his [or her] attorney with his [or her] defense"); O.C.G.A. § 17-7-130. Thus we find that, had trial counsel objected and the allegedly-improper argument and questioning been excluded, there is no reasonable probability that the jury would have found Waldrip incompetent.
Finally, Waldrip argues that this Court's decision in Stanford v. Stewart, 274 Ga. 468 (1) (554 SE2d 480) (2001) requires that we consider not whether a meritorious objection by trial counsel resulting in the exclusion of the complained of argument and questioning would have resulted in a different outcome, but rather whether an objection by trial counsel would have preserved the alleged error by the trial court for appeal. However, Waldrip misreads our decision in Stanford. The error we found in Stanford was not that the habeas court had inquired into the possible result on retrial if trial counsel had not waived the defendant's right to complain of an error on appeal. Instead, the error we found was that the habeas court had applied the wrong prejudice standard in making that inquiry, namely, that it had required a showing "that a retrial would not necessarily result in acquittal" rather than a showing of merely a reasonable probability of acquittal. Id. at 470 (emphasis supplied). In Waldrip's case, we follow our decision in Wadley v. State, 258 Ga. 465 (369 SE2d 734) (1988), where we explicitly held that the likelihood of a different result at trial if error is corrected by proper objection by counsel, rather than the likelihood of reversal on appeal, is the proper inquiry in an ineffective assistance of trial counsel claim. See also Landers v. State, 270 Ga. 189 (4) (508 SE2d 637) (1998) (finding no reasonable probability that trial counsel's failure to object to the prosecutor's improper comments on the defendant's silence led to a different result). As we noted above, we believe that there would have been no reasonable probability of a different outcome in Waldrip's competency proceedings if trial counsel had objected and the argument and questioning at issue had been disallowed.
Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur.
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