1. To prevail on a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment, a defendant must establish both that counsel's performance was deficient and that the deficient performance prejudiced the defense. Stafford v. State , 312 Ga. 811 (3) (a), 865 S.E.2d 116 (2021) (citing Strickland v. Washington , 466 U.S. 668, 687 (III), 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984) ). To establish deficient performance, the defendant must demonstrate that counsel " ‘performed at trial in an objectively unreasonable way considering all the circumstances and in the light of prevailing professional norms.’ "

As such, an ultimate-issue objection to statements the investigator made during the custodial interview would have been meritless, and the failure to make a meritless objection is not deficient performance. See Stafford v. State , 312 Ga. 811, 819-820, 865 S.E.2d 116 (2021). (c) Smith contends that trial counsel was deficient for failing to object to the jury instruction on transferred intent, arguing that the State presented no evidence that Smith intended to shoot anyone.

[10, 11] To determine whether a trial court erred in failing to give a requested jury instruction, we must "read and consider the instructions as a whole." Stafford v. State, 312 Ga. 811, 820 (4), 865 S.E.2d 116 (2021). Where the jury charge, taken as a whole, sufficiently instructs the jury on a point of law, a trial court does not err in failing to give an "unnecessary," "additional instruction" Id. at 820-821 (4), 865 S.E.2d 116.

Because the trial court fully and correctly instructed the jury on the relevant points of law, it was not error to fail to give the additional explanatory instruction that Wilson requested. See, e.g., Stafford v. State , 312 Ga. 811, 821 (4), 865 S.E.2d 116 (2021) (where trial court gave updated version of pattern jury instruction on causation in felony murder, no additional instruction on unforeseen or intervening cause was needed because, "considered as a whole, the charge given by the trial court was a correct statement of the law with regard to proximate cause in a felony murder case"); Whiting v. State , 296 Ga. 429, 431 (2), 768 S.E.2d 448 (2015) (trial court not required to give separate charge on proximate cause when court's instructions "adequately informed the jury that Whiting could only be found guilty of felony murder if the conspiracy to conduct the marijuana transaction was the proximate cause of [the victim's] death") (citation and punctuation omitted).

However, pretermitting whether trial counsel performed deficiently by not objecting under Rule 403 and Rule 404 (b), and consistent with our determination that any trial court error in admitting this evidence under Rule 807 was harmless, we cannot say that the failure to object to this evidence on the grounds asserted by Talley created a reasonable probability that, but for the failure to make these objections, the outcome of the trial could have been different. See Stafford v. State , 312 Ga. 811, 824 (5) (b), 865 S.E.2d 116 (2021) (no prejudice where counsel's failure to make an objection to certain evidence under the Confrontation Clause was harmless for the same reason that it was harmless for the trial court to admit the same evidence under the co-conspirator exception to the hearsay rule). Moreover, although the evidence of the "criminal enterprise" and Talley's threat against Walker might have reflected negatively on Talley, "even if objectionable, [it] was not particularly disparaging of [Talley's] character when viewed in context, especially given the strength of the other admissible evidence against him."

(Citation omitted.) Stafford v. State , 312 Ga. 811, 820 (4), 865 S.E.2d 116 (2021). Here, the evidence presented at trial provided some support for the requested instruction.

(a) The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment provides that "[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him," U.S. Const. Amend. VI, and "prohibits the admission of out-of-court testimonial statements made by a declarant who is unavailable for cross-examination." Stafford v. State , 312 Ga. 811, 824 (5) (b), 865 S.E.2d 116 (2021). See also Crawford v. Washington , 541 U.S. 36, 68 (V) (C), 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004).

Moreover, to evaluate whether a trial court plainly erred in failing to give a jury instruction, we "read and consider the instructions as a whole." Stafford v. State, 312 Ga. 811, 820 (4) (865 S.E.2d 116) (2021).

All else equal, legal cause generally will be harder to establish when it turns on whether it was reasonably foreseeable to the defendant what third parties would do in response to his conduct — and even more so when, like here, the chain of causation involves multiple third parties acting in particular ways over an extended period of time. See Eubanks, 317 Ga. at 569 (2) (a) (ii), 894 S.E.2d 27 (explaining that in a hypothetical case in which someone dies because they tried to flee from an ongoing robbery by climbing from a third-floor balcony to the balcony below, slipped, and then fell thirty feet to the ground, "proximate cause would be a closer question" (citing Stafford v. State, 312 Ga. 811, 865 S.E.2d 116 (2021) (decided on other grounds)). That is not to say that a finding of legal cause is foreclosed merely because a causal chain is made up of a series of events that must happen in sequence, or includes third parties, but as a matter of logic and probability, such attenuated chains of causation typically will be harder to characterize as "natural or probable."

As Dunston acknowledges, we have affirmed convictions in other cases where the appellant complained of the same instruction, and Dunston has failed to distinguish his case from those prior cases. See Wilson v. State, 315 Ga. 728, 735 (5), 883 S.E.2d 802 (2023) (holding that, "taken together," the set of instructions set forth above "adequately informed the jury about the principles of proximate cause" that apply to felony-murder cases); Stafford v. State, 312 Ga. 811, 821 (4), 865 S.E.2d 116 (2021) ("An additional jury charge on unforeseen or intervening cause was unnecessary because, considered as a whole, the charge given by the trial court was a correct statement of the law with regard to proximate cause in a felony murder case."); Ware v. State, 305 Ga. 457, 459 (2), 826 S.E.2d 56 (2019) ("When viewed as a whole, these charges were sufficient to instruct the jury on the principles of proximate causation relevant to this case." (citation and punctuation omitted)). Indeed, Dunston has failed to identify any flaw in the charge as given or otherwise make any argument why it was insufficient.