State v. Wakefield

Branch, Judge.

These five appeals and two cross-appeals arise from revelations that in October 2008, Judge Paschal English had a sexual encounter with Kimberly Cornwell, a Griffin Judicial Circuit public defender who represented five defendants or their co-defendants1 at trial before Judge English in Fayette County Superior Court between November 2008 and March 2010. Judge English resigned from the bench on April 23, 2010.

All five defendants amended their timely motions for new trial to assert that the English-Cornwell relationship, and/or defendants’ lack of knowledge concerning it, violated…