GA: Def counsel wasn’t ineffective for not arguing more strenuously an issue raised and rejected

Defendant’s IAC claim here was that defense counsel didn’t argue more vigorously the motion to suppress such that he would have won it it had been better argued. How to argue is “strategy.” In light of his lack of standing, that argument fails. Entwisle v. State, 2017 Ga. App. LEXIS 25 (Feb. 1, 2017):

Pretermitting whether a favorable ruling on the motion to suppress the evidence was possible, however, Entwisle has failed to demonstrate that counsel’s failure to argue more emphatically the motion constituted ineffective assistance.“Trial tactics and strategy, no matter how mistaken in hindsight, are almost never adequate grounds for finding trial counsel ineffective unless they are so patently unreasonable that no competent attorney would have chosen them.”Given Entwisle’s position at the time he filed the motion to suppress that neither he nor any one else lived in the Payne Road house at the time of the search and that he lived elsewhere, we find no basis to conclude that counsel’s decision against arguing more strenuously for suppression of the evidence “was, at the time of trial, unreasonable.” And “the fact that present counsel disagrees with trial counsel’s strategy does not render such strategic decision unreasonable.”