Rashad Bester was convicted of malice murder, aggravated assault, and sodomy after the strangulation death of Shawna Webber. The Georgia Supreme Court affirmed the malice-murder and sodomy convictions but vacated the aggravated-assault conviction and sentence because both the assault and murder counts were predicated on the same strangulation, with no evidence of a separate nonfatal injury followed by a deliberate interval before the killing. Bester also claimed that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to challenge prospective jurors and to exclude similar-transaction evidence. The Court rejected those claims, concluding that the jurors had not shown fixed opinions of guilt and that the challenged counsel decisions were authorized by the record. Bester further argued that the prosecutor used a peremptory strike against an African-American juror for a pretextual reason. Applying Batson, the Court deferred to the trial court’s finding that the stated reason— the juror’s role as a bondsman in a large drug case—was race neutral and not shown to be discriminatory. The Court therefore left the principal convictions intact while correcting the merger error. Judgment was affirmed in part and vacated in part, with all Justices concurring.