Clark v. State

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to modification resulting from motions for reconsideration under Supreme Court
Rule 27, the Court’s reconsideration, and editorial revisions by the Reporter of Decisions. The version of the
opinion published in the Advance Sheets for the Georgia Reports, designated as the “Final Copy,” will replace any
prior version on the Court’s website and docket. A bound volume of the Georgia Reports will contain the final and
official text of the opinion.

In the
Supreme Court of Georgia
No. S26A0062
Cleveland Clark
v.
The State

On Appeal from the Superior Court of Fulton County
No. 48640

Decided: June 2, 2026

ELLINGTON, Justice.
Cleveland Clark appeals his convictions for malice murder
and other crimes in connection with the April 2000 murder-for-
hire of Michelle Reid Rai. 1 Clark asserts on appeal that his trial

1 Michelle Rai was killed on April 26, 2000, and on September 22, 2006,
a Fulton County grand jury indicted Clark, along with Chiman Rai, Carl V.
Clark, Herbert Green, and Willie Fred Evans, on one count of malice murder
(Count 1), two counts of felony murder (Counts 2 & 3), aggravated assault
(Count 4), burglary (Count 5), possession of a knife during the commission of a
felony (Count 6), and conspiracy to commit a crime (Count 7), and indicted
Cleveland Clark alone for cruelty to children in the first degree (Count 8).
Count 8 of the indictment was dead docketed prior to trial, and Clark was tried
separately on the remaining counts from May 28 to July 2, 2009. The jury
found Clark guilty on Counts 1 through 7 on June 26, 2009, and on July 2,
2009, in the sentencing phase of the trial, the jury recommended a sentence of
death on Count 1, after finding the existence of five aggravating factors. The
same day, the trial court sentenced Clark to death on Count 1 and further sen-
tenced him to 20 years in prison on Count 5, to run consecutively to Count 1;
five years in prison on Count 6, to run consecutively to Count 1; and ten years
in prison on Count 7, to run consecutively to Count 5. Counts 2 and 3 were
counsel provided constitutionally ineffective assistance, which
prejudiced his defense; that the trial court’s refusal to grant a con-
tinuance all but guaranteed that Clark’s attorneys could not ren-
der constitutionally effective assistance of counsel; and that the
trial court violated Clark’s right not to be tried while incompetent.
Clark asserts that he is entitled to a new trial on these grounds,
but if we determine that the record below is insufficiently devel-
oped on the issue of ineffective assistance of counsel, he asks that
we remand this case with instructions that the trial court hold an
evidentiary hearing on the issue. Because Clark was represented
by counsel from the same public defender’s office from the time of
his arrest until the time he filed his notice of appeal, this appel-
late proceeding represents Clark’s first opportunity to raise his
claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel, and we remand
this case for an evidentiary hearing on that issue.
The evidence at Clark’s trial showed the following.

vacated by operation of law, and Count 4 was merged into Count 1.
Clark filed a general motion for new trial on July 2, 2009, which was
amended on October 1, 2014, and supplemented on September 2, 2015. After
hearings on November 24, 2015, and December 18, 2015, the trial court par-
tially granted the motion on March 28, 2016, ruling that Clark was entitled to
a new trial on the sole issue of “mental retardation” relating to sentencing. And
on December 13, 2021, the trial court issued a “final order” denying the re-
mainder of the motion for new trial. Following a sentencing hearing on Febru-
ary 27, 2024, Clark was re-sentenced on Count 1 to life in prison without parole
and Count 7 was merged into Count 1. The sentences on the other counts re-
mained the same. Clark filed a notice of appeal on March 27, 2024, and
amended that notice two days later on March 29, but this Court dismissed that
appeal on March 31, 2025, because the dead-docketed Count 8 was not yet re-
solved. The State subsequently moved to nolle prosequi Count 8, and the trial
court granted that motion on April 7, 2025. Clark then filed another notice of
appeal on May 5, 2025, initiating the current appeal, and amended that notice
on July 2, 2025. The appeal was docketed to the term of this Court beginning
December 2025 and submitted for a decision on the briefs.

2
Michelle and Rajeeve Rai were married in March 2000 and shared
a daughter, who was born in October 1999. On the afternoon of
April 26, 2000, Rajeeve returned to the couple’s apartment in Un-
ion City, Georgia, to find that Michelle had been strangled and
stabbed to death, while their child was left alone. In June 2008, a
jury convicted Ricky’s father, Chiman Rai , of multiple criminal
charges, including malice murder and criminal conspiracy to com-
mit murder, in connection with Michelle’s death, and this Court
affirmed that conviction in 2015. See Rai v. State, 297 Ga. 472
(2015). The State’s theory in that case was that Chiman, who was
from India, did not approve of his son’s marriage to Michelle, who
was African American, so he hired someone to kill her. Id. at 473.
The State argued at Clark’s trial that Clark was the man paid to
kill Michelle.
Herbert Green testified at Clark’s trial that he worked with
Chiman for a number of years in Jackson, Mississippi, and some-
time in 2000, Chiman asked him to kill Michelle. When Green
declined to do the killing, Chiman asked if Green knew someone
who would do it. Green, in turn, asked his friend Willie Fred Ev-
ans if he knew anyone who would be willing to kill Michelle, and
Evans said that he “could have [the murder] done.” Evans testi-
fied that, after speaking with Green, he asked Clark if he would
do the job for $10,000. Evans said Clark agreed and asked for
$1,500 up front to cover the expense of travel between Mississippi,
where Clark lived, and Georgia, where Michelle and Rajeeve
lived. Chiman later brought $1,500 to Green in a brown paper
bag, along with a note with Michelle’s name and a Georgia ad-
dress. Green gave the brown paper bag containing the $1,500 and
the note to Evans, who gave them to Clark. Evans said that when
Clark arrived in Georgia and later ran into difficulties in complet-
ing the job, Clark asked for more money. Evans relayed this re-
quest to Green , and Green later obtained $10,000 in cash from

3
Chiman, which Green gave to Evans. Evans then wired additional
money to Clark in several installments.
Clark traveled to Georgia in April 2000, along with his
brother Carl V. Clark, and they visited with their teenage cousin,
Jammie Tatum. Over a period of a few days, Tatum took several
rides with the Clarks. On one occasion she rode with Carl to pick
up money that had been wired through Western Union, and, on
another occasion, she rode with Clark to an apartment complex
in Union City where he took photographs. A few days later, Ta-
tum and her best friend, Clinique Jackson, rode back to the same
apartment complex with Clark. When they arrived at the com-
plex, Clark directed the girls to knock on an apartment door to
determine who was inside, and they reported to Clark that a
woman with a baby answered the door. Clark told them to go back
and knock on the door again and ask to use the bathroom, but,
this time, he went with them, while concealing himself. When the
woman, whom they later learned was Michelle, opened the door
to let the girls in, Clark came into the apartment with a gun and
told Michelle to get down on the floor. Clark began choking
Michelle with a vacuum cleaner cord until she stopped moving.
Clark then directed both girls to leave the apartment. Tatum left
first. As Jackson was leaving, she saw Michelle’s body “jerking”
and observed Clark begin stabbing Michelle with a knife.
Clark and the two girls left the apartment complex and re-
turned to Tatum’s house, where Clark made a telephone call and
the girls listened to the call on an extension. They heard Clark
tell a man on the phone that “it was done,” or that “he had [taken]
care of that,” and the other man directed Clark to “come on back
home.” Evans testified that after Michelle was murdered, Clark
called him to say that he got the job done, and the next day, when
Clark was back in Mississippi, Evans paid him the remainder of

4
the $10,000, less Evans’s cut of $1,500.
The investigation into Michelle’s murder stalled until 2004
when Jackson was arrested following a high-speed chase and
charged with multiple crimes. Jackson told police about Clark’s
involvement in Michelle’s murder in the hope of more lenient
treatment in connection with those crimes. And on September 22,
2006, Clark was indicted along with his brother Carl, Chiman,
Green, and Evans, in connection with Michelle’s death.
Following his indictment, Clark was represented by the
Capitol Defender’s Office (the “CDO”) in Fulton County, which re-
lied on the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council
(“GPDSC”) to fund the cost of the CDO’s investigation and expert
witnesses for the defense. Clark’s trial was scheduled for May 28,
2009, at a time when GPDSC was experiencing serious financial
problems. And in January 2009, Clark’s defense began raising is-
sues about its inability to prepare for trial due to a lack of funding.
The State first noted at a January 9 status conference that budg-
etary issues had led the governor to prohibit out-of-state travel by
state employees, hampering the CDO from collecting mitigation
evidence in Mississippi, where Clark grew up and lived at the
time of the murder. The financial challenges for the defense in
preparing its case were further discussed at a March 16, 2009 mo-
tion hearing/planning conference.
Then, on March 23, 2009, the trial court held the first in a
series of ex parte conferences on the issue. 2 Defense counsel re-
ported at that conference that GPDSC employees told him that

2 The transcripts of the ex parte conferences originally were filed under
seal and remained sealed when the record was transmitted to this Court. But
because Clark’s defense occasionally relied on portions of those sealed records

5
funding for experts likely would be unavailable for Clark’s trial
because GPDSC had over $400,000 in unpaid expert fees. In sub-
sequent ex parte conferences, the defense continued to report on
the challenges it was facing due to a lack of funding, noting that
at least two experts it intended to call were already owed money
by GPDSC for prior work performed, that those experts were tell-
ing the defense that they could not get their analyses done before
the scheduled May 28 trial, and in other capital cases, the CDO
was being told that it would be July 1 before it could expect to
even ask for money for experts.
In an ex parte session on May 4, 2009, the defense reported
that, although some experts were being paid, those with pay con-
cerns were asking Fulton County to guarantee payment. Addi-
tionally, because the trial was scheduled for May 28, many of the
potential experts were telling the CDO that they did not have
enough time to perform testing on Clark and prepare a report.
Defense counsel said that he did not believe that the defense
would be able to get a mitigation case ready before trial. The trial
judge replied that “the experts just need to get on it and do what-
ever they need to do” because he could not keep postponing the
trial. Three days later, on May 7, 2009, in another ex parte con-
ference, the defense reported that it had narrowed down their re-
quest to three experts, but that no contracts had been signed be-
cause none of the experts would sign a contract without a pay-
ment guarantee from someone other than GPDSC. 3

in its court filings and because it appears that the need for confidentiality has
passed, we issued an order unsealing the records to allow full consideration of
the issues raised by the parties. See order dated May 19, 2026.
3 On May 8, 2009, the director of the CDO emailed GPSDC to identify
potential expert witnesses needed for Clark’s trial and the estimated costs of
retaining them, which came to between $38,000 and $58,000.

6
Then, at an ex parte conference on May 20, the defense re-
ported that GPDSC agreed to give them $10,000 and nothing
more before July 1, 2009. The defense further reported that it en-
tered into a $5,000 contract with one expert, leaving the defense
without sufficient funds to hire the other experts it needed. 4 Ac-
cordingly, defense counsel said that he planned to announce at
the start of trial that he was not ready to try the case. But the
trial judge announced his intention to proceed with the trial as
scheduled. 5
The defense filed a motion for a continuance two days later,
on May 22, 2009, along with a “Notice of Intent of Defense to Raise
Issue of Mental Retardation and Mental Incompetence.” 6 The no-
tice apparently was based on a verbal report received the same
day from the defense’s expert preliminarily opining that Clark
met the diagnostic criteria for mental retardation and appeared

4 GPDSC apparently approved the $10,000 for Clark’s trial on or
around May 18, 2009, ten days before trial. The CDO then entered into a con-
tract with that expert, which was dated as of May 19, 2009.
5 The trial judge told defense counsel, “I am not going to delay this
case. And you are not going to delay it, if you value your professional reputation
and your license to practice law.… All you can do is the best you can do. You
and I both will let the Supreme Court sort this out.”
6 This opinion uses the terms “mental retardation” and “mentally re-
tarded” because that was the statutory language at the time of Clark’s trial.
See OCGA § 17-7-131(c)(3), (j) (providing for a life sentence for any defendant
who is convicted but can prove his or her intellectual disability beyond a rea-
sonable doubt in the guilt/innocence phase of his or her death penalty trial);
OCGA § 17-7-131(a)(2) (as amended in 2017 to replace the term “mentally re-
tarded” with the term “intellectual disability” and to renumber paragraphs but
otherwise without making any change to the relevant definition: “‘Intellectual
disability’ means having significantly subaverage general intellectual func-
tioning resulting in or associated with impairments in adaptive behavior which
manifested during the developmental period.”).

7
not to be competent to stand trial. The trial court held an eviden-
tiary hearing on the motion for continuance on May 27, 2009, the
day before the trial was scheduled to begin, at which witnesses
from the CDO and GPDSC addressed the GPDSC funding crisis.
The evidence showed that the CDO had received a verbal confir-
mation for an amount not to exceed $10,000 for the current fiscal
year and that the GPDSC budget was “down to pretty much noth-
ing for the capital defender.” GPDSC had $165,000 available for
the CDO but owed $370,000 in outstanding bills. The GPDSC nev-
ertheless approved $10,000, with a $5,000 backup, for Clark’s
trial using money set aside by the GPDSC director “to keep cases
moving.” After noting that the executive branch’s budgetary is-
sues were negatively affecting the judiciary, the trial court ruled
at the hearing that it was denying Clark’s motion for continuance
and ordered GPSDC to deposit $60,000 into the registry of the
trial court. 7
Voir dire in Clark’s criminal trial commenced the next day,
on May 28, 2009. During the first two days of voir dire, in re-
sponse to the defense’s notice of intent to raise issues of mental
retardation and incompetency, the trial court issued orders allow-
ing the State to hire two experts to conduct mental evaluations of
Clark for the State, paid for at public expense, on his competency
to stand trial, the presence or absence of mental illness, and his
intelligence quotient.
After receiving confirmation that the defense expert’s final
report found Clark to be incompetent, Clark’s counsel filed a “Spe-
cial Plea of Incompetency to Stand Trial and Demand to Impanel

7 On June 2, 2009, the trial court signed an order vacating that May
27 order and entered a new order requiring the same deposit of funds into the
registry within five days of GPDSC’s receipt of its next fiscal allotment from
the State of Georgia.

8
a Special Jury to Try the Issue” in open court on June 2, 2009.
The trial court then paused the criminal trial proceedings to hold
a civil trial on the issue of Clark’s competency to stand trial that
began the same day, June 2, and lasted through June 4, 2009.
Defense counsel opposed proceeding to the civil trial at that time,
noting that although he felt professionally obligated to file a plea
of incompetency once the defense expert raised the issue, he be-
lieved that further testing was required to more accurately deter-
mine whether Clark was competent to stand trial. Defense coun-
sel then asserted, “[U]nder the circumstances, I will put on the
record that I am not ready to strike this jury.” The trial court
replied that he intended to strike the civil jury and then pro-
ceeded with voir dire of a separate jury panel for the civil trial.
The defense expert testified at the civil trial that Clark
tested as mildly mentally retarded, and in the doctor’s opinion,
was incompetent to stand trial. One of the State’s experts testified
that, in his opinion, Clark was competent to stand trial as of three
days earlier and was malingering the symptoms of mental retar-
dation, memory loss, and competency. A report prepared by the
second State expert, which was entered into evidence, also opined
that Clark was “malingering mental retardation.” 8 The civil jury
found against Clark’s plea of incompetency, determining that
Clark was competent to stand trial.
The criminal trial resumed on June 5, 2009, with voir dire
continuing on June 6 and witness testimony beginning on June
18, 2009. The criminal jury ultimately convicted Clark on all the
counts it considered. Following further testimony and argument
in the sentencing phase of trial, the jury determined that Clark

8 The State also presented the testimony of two non-expert witnesses
who had interacted with Clark while he was in custody and called Clark him-
self to testify.

9
should receive the death penalty on Count 1, malice murder. And
on July 2, 2009, the trial court sentenced Clark to death on Count
1 and imposed various terms of imprisonment on Counts 5 to 7,
while the other charges were either vacated by operation of law
or merged. (See footnote 1.)
Following his convictions and sentencing, Clark’s assigned
CDO trial attorneys filed a general motion for new trial on July
2, 2009, which was amended by new post-trial counsel from the
CDO on October 1, 2014, and supplemented on September 2,
2015. Following two hearings, the trial court entered an order
partially granting the amended motion for new trial on March 28,
2016. That order granted Clark a new trial “solely on the issue of
mental retardation” in connection with sentencing. In that order,
the trial court acknowledged that Clark was only able to raise is-
sues of mental retardation and mental competency less than one
week before trial and that “[t]he fact that this information was
not available earlier in the process was attributable to a cata-
strophic funding breakdown in the state indigent defense sys-
tem.” However, the trial court noted the defense did not raise the
issue of mental retardation or seek a verdict option of guilty but
mentally retarded in the guilt/innocence phase of trial because
Clark insisted that he was not guilty, and the State successfully
argued that the defense could not enter a plea of not guilty in that
phase of trial and also assert mental retardation for purposes of
sentencing.
The trial court determined that the defense nevertheless
was able to present some evidence of mental retardation during
the sentencing phase, and the court found that “[a]lthough vigor-
ously contested by the State, in retrospect, this evidence was
nonetheless sufficient to give rise to a reasonable probability that
… Clark could have been found by a jury to be to a person with

10
mental retardation beyond a reasonable doubt.” But “[b]ecause
of the State’s objections and the Court’s concurrence, the jury in
this case was never called upon to make a factual determination
as to whether … Clark met the relevant criteria for mental retar-
dation beyond a reasonable doubt” as required by law. Therefore,
the trial court partially granted the motion for a new trial, finding
that “Clark is entitled by both state and federal law to have his
claim of mental retardation decided prior to being subjected to the
death penalty ... because defense counsel never waived this
claim.”
After the judge from Clark’s trial retired in or around De-
cember 2016 , a new judge was assigned to the case. The new
judge held a status conference, on November 27, 2018, and a non-
evidentiary hearing on December 14, 2018, to address the issues
remaining for decision in connection with the motion for new trial.
The trial court subsequently issued a “Final Order Resolving De-
fendant’s Motion for New Trial” on December 17, 2021. And on
February 27, 2024, the trial court held a re-sentencing hearing in
accordance with the March 28, 2016, order partially granting the
motion for new trial. At the hearing, the State asked the trial
court to sentence Clark “short of the death penalty for finality in
this case.” Therefore, the only issue left for the court to decide
was whether the sentence for Count 1, murder, should be life
without the possibility of parole or life with the possibility of pa-
role. 9 During the hearing, Michelle’s father read a victim impact
statement via Zoom, and the defense relied on a prepared packet,
filed five days earlier, containing expert affidavits and other ma-

9 The State also conceded a defense argument that Clark should not
have been sentenced on Count 7, conspiracy to commit a crime, but instead
that count should have merged into Count 1.

11
terials, addressing the issues of Clark’s possible mental retarda-
tion and sentencing . After hearing arguments from the parties,
the trial court pronounced its revised sentence at the hearing,
sentencing Clark to life without the possibility of parole on Count
1 and merging Count 7 into Count 1, which removed the prior ten-
year prison sentence on that charge. All the other sentences re-
mained the same.
Clark retained private counsel to represent him on appeal,
and she entered a notice of appearance of March 8, 2024, conclud-
ing the CDO’s representation of Clark.
1. Clark first asserts that his counsel provided constitu-
tionally ineffective assistance at trial, which prejudiced his de-
fense. Clark contends that he was denied the effective assistance
of counsel “on multiple fronts,” asserting that his attorneys were
deprived of the tools they needed to present “a constitutionally
appropriate defense” and also failed to meet the required profes-
sional standard of care on basic tasks within their control. Specif-
ically, Clark asserts that his trial attorneys were ineffective for
not having him timely evaluated for competency to stand trial, in
failing to impeach key witnesses for the State, and in failing to
conduct a meaningful pretrial investigation.
(a) The State asserts, however, that “it is possible” that
Clark did not preserve his claims of ineffectiveness of counsel for
appellate review because he did not assert them at the earliest
practicable opportunity. See Henderson v. State, 322 Ga. 304, 313
(2025) (determining that ineffectiveness of counsel claim “must be
raised at the earliest practicable moment, … before appeal if the
opportunity to do so is available,” and such opportunity becomes
available “when the convicted defendant is no longer represented
by the attorney who represented him at trial” (quotation marks
omitted)).

12
It is undisputed that Clark was represented by the CDO,
albeit by a succession of different attorneys within that office,
from the time of his arrest to the time of his direct appeal. And in
Ryan v. Thomas, 261 Ga. 661, 662 (1991), this Court determined
that “different attorneys from the same public defender’s office
are not to be considered ‘new’ counsel for the purpose of raising
ineffective assistance claims,” and thus, “a defendant’s right to
raise such a claim may not be barred by the failure of a succession
of attorneys from the same public defender’s office to raise it.”
However, in arguing that Clark’s claims of ineffectiveness
of counsel “possibl[y]” could be barred, the State relies on Chat-
man v. Mancill, 280 Ga. 253, 255 (2006), in which this Court con-
cluded that the trial court erred in excusing the defendant’s fail-
ure to timely raise an ineffectiveness of counsel claim on the
ground that all of the defendant’s counsel had been employed by
the same public defender’s office. This Court determined that the
trial court “overlooked the crucial fact,” as shown in the record,
that the counsel who were the subject of the ineffectiveness claim
had left the public defender’s office by the time a later assigned
public defender had the opportunity to raise it. Id. Accordingly,
we determined that “[t]he rationale in Ryan was not applicable to
[the appellant’s] post-trial counsel who were no longer members
of the [public defender’s office].” Id.
Nevertheless, the State acknowledges that we also have de-
termined that a direct appeal represented a defendant’s first op-
portunity to raise claims of ineffective assistance by a public de-
fender where the defendant’s appellate attorney was appointed
after the motion for new trial was decided and the notice of appeal
was filed, and where nothing in the record indicated that the trial
attorney was no longer employed by the public defender’s office.
See Hung v. State, 282 Ga. 684, 685 (2007).

13
Here, because the State has not pointed to any evidence in
the record demonstrating whether, or when, Clark’s trial counsel
left the employ of the CDO, we have no basis on which to conclude
that Clark’s claims of ineffectiveness of counsel were waived, and
“[t]hus, it must be concluded that this issue is being raised at the
first practicable moment.” Id. at 685 (quotation marks omitted).
(b) To establish his claims of ineffective assistance of coun-
sel, Clark must prove both that his counsel’s performance was de-
ficient and that the deficient performance prejudiced him. See
Strickland v. Washington, 466 US 668, 687 (1984). “To prove de-
ficient performance, [an appellant] must show that his counsel
performed in an objectively unreasonable way considering all the
circumstances and in light of prevailing professional norms.”
Ward v. State, 313 Ga. 265, 272–73 (2022) (quotation marks omit-
ted). See also Strickland, 466 US at 688. “To satisfy the prejudice
prong, a defendant must establish a reasonable probability that,
in the absence of counsel’s deficient performance, the result of the
trial would have been different.” Lanier v. State, 310 Ga. 520, 524
(2020) (citing Strickland, 466 US at 694).
The State asserts that Clark’s claims fail because he did
not meet his burden under the prejudice prong to show that an
earlier investigation into his competency, impeachment of the
State’s witnesses, or a more thorough investigation would have
uncovered any additional evidence or further expert opinion suf-
ficient to create a reasonable probability that the outcome of his
trial would have been different. But because Clark is represented
by non-CDO counsel for the first time in this appeal, thus making
the appeal Clark’s first opportunity to raise these claims, he has
not yet had an opportunity to present evidence on what an earlier
mental evaluation, impeachment of the State’s witnesses, or fur-

14
ther pretrial investigation may have shown. Thus, the issues can-
not be determined from the record before us. Accordingly, we va-
cate the trial court’s judgment, in part, and remand for an eviden-
tiary hearing on Clark’s claims of ineffective assistance of coun-
sel. See Green v. State, 295 Ga. 108, 112 (2014); Williams v. State,
280 Ga. 297, 298 (2006); Shadron v. State, 275 Ga. 767, 769
(2002).
2. Clark also asserts that the trial court’s refusal to grant
a continuance “all but guaranteed that … Clark’s attorneys could
not render constitutionally effective assistance of counsel.”
It is well established that “[w]hether to grant a motion for
continuance is entirely within the sound discretion of the trial
court and will not be disturbed absent a clear abuse of discretion.”
Yarn v. State, 305 Ga. 421, 425 (2019) (quotation marks omitted).
See also OCGA § 17-8-22. And “[t]o obtain a new trial based upon
the denial of a motion for a continuance, an appellant must show
not only a clear abuse of discretion on the part of the trial court
in denying the motion but also that he was harmed by that de-
nial.” Blalock v. State, 316 Ga. 330, 338 (2023).
Although Clark acknowledges that trial courts generally
are afforded wide latitude to grant or deny requests for a contin-
uance, he asserts that, in light of the extreme financial difficulties
of the GPDSC, the trial court knew that the defense lacked ade-
quate funding for a mitigation investigation or for expert wit-
nesses, and that the denial of a continuance under those circum-
stances amounted to a clear abuse of discretion. 10 But even if the

10 We note that Clark presented significant argument regarding the
denial of his request for a continuance in his motion for new trial, but the trial
court did not address that denial in either of its orders denying a new trial.

15
trial court abused its discretion, Clark was required to show how
he was harmed by that decision, and he has not pointed to any
evidence showing that a grant of his motion to continue the trial
would have enabled other experts and further investigation to
turn up additional support for his claim of incompetency or fur-
ther mitigation evidence.
Because Clark failed to carry his burden to show how the
failure to grant his motion for continuance resulted in harm, he
has not shown that he is entitled to a new trial on this ground.
See Blalock, 316 Ga. at 339 (holding that there was no ground for
new trial based on denial of continuance where, among other rea-
sons, defendant did not show further expert testimony would
have helped him formulate an effective defense or how the testi-
mony would otherwise have benefitted him at trial); Anglin v.
State, 312 Ga. 503, 510 (2021) (concluding that defendant was not
entitled to a new trial where he failed to show how the lack of
additional time for further investigation harmed him); Phoenix v.
State, 304 Ga. 785, 789 (2018) (explaining that, to show harm
from the denial of a continuance, a defendant must identify what
other evidence or witnesses he would have put forth if given more
time, and “speculation and conjecture are not enough” (citation
omitted)).
3. Clark further asserts that the trial court violated his
right not to be tried while incompetent. He contends that he was
denied a fair trial because the trial court did not follow the proper
procedures to determine whether he was competent to stand trial.
The State argues, however, that Clark has failed to show

However, the second and final order addressing the motion for new trial pro-
vides that the trial court was denying all unresolved issues attacking Clark’s
convictions, and thus it appears that the trial court summarily denied Clark’s
claims that he was entitled to a new trial based on the denial of a continuance.

16
that he preserved this claim for appellate review. Clark did not
assert the claim he now raises on appeal in the trial court below,
either at trial or in his amended motion for new trial, and the trial
court issued no ruling on such a claim. See Clay v. State, 309 Ga.
593, 593–94 (2020) (concluding that defendant waived claims by
not raising them in the trial court and obtaining a ruling on the
issue below). But even if Clark properly had preserved this claim
for appeal, his argument on this ground fails because he did not
show how any alleged procedural error by the trial court resulted
in harm to him or that following the procedures Clark now argues
should have applied would have produced a different result at the
trial on his competency. Accordingly, Clark’s argument on this
ground fails.
Judgment affirmed in part and vacated and remanded in
part. All the Justices concur, except Peterson, C.J., and Warren,
P.J., not participating and LaGrua, J., disqualified.

17