Justia Georgia Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

Tiffany Wise appealed her conviction for malice murder for beating 88-year-old Mabel Berry to death. Concluding that the evidence at trial was sufficient to support the conviction and that any error in the admission of a police officer's testimony was harmless, the Supreme Court affirmed. View "Wise v. Georgia" on Justia Law

Russell James Wright and Debra Sue Hall were married in 1997 and divorced in 2000 under a divorce decree that required Wright to pay monthly alimony. In 2012 Wright filed a motion to set aside their divorce decree on the ground that Hall had committed fraud in marrying him when she was not divorced from her first husband. The trial court denied the motion, and the Supreme Court granted Wright's application for discretionary appeal to consider whether the trial court erred. Because Georgia law does not confer validity on an otherwise void marriage for the purpose of requiring the payment of alimony unrelated to the protection of children, the Supreme Court reversed the trial court's decision. View "Wright v. Hall" on Justia Law

Marquis Young was tried by jury and convicted of murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. He appealed, contending that the trial court erred when it allowed the State to reopen the evidence after closing argument had begun and that he was denied the effective assistance of counsel. Upon our review of the record and briefs, the Supreme Court found no error and affirmed. View "Young v. Georgia" on Justia Law

Appellees James and Lawson and two other men were charged in an indictment for the 2005 murders of Jeremiah Ingram and Fatima Fisher. James and Lawson were convicted of murder in separate trials; another co-defendant was acquitted in a trial that took place after the trials of appellees; and the fourth co-indictee pled guilty to a charge of voluntary manslaughter. Both appellees moved for new trial and after conducting a hearing on appellee James's motion, the trial court issued an order in September 2011 that granted new trials to both appellees. The trial court based its grant of new trials on the unavailability at appellees' trials of a piece of evidence that was available at the trial of the co-indictee who was acquitted. The evidence at issue was the second page of the three-page investigative summary compiled by the Office of the Fulton County Medical Examiner. The trial court called the missing page a "critical piece of evidence" and ruled that new trials were required. The State directly appealed the trial court's grant of new trials to appellees Christopher James and Herman Lawson, co-indictees who were convicted in 2008 of malice murder in separate jury trials in the Superior Court of Fulton County. Upon review, the Supreme Court concluded that the trial court erred and reversed the trial court's order granting new trials to James and Lawson. View "Georgia v. James" on Justia Law

Appellant Tracy Lashawn Smith was charged with felony murder (predicated on the underlying felony of either aggravated assault or aggravated battery), aggravated assault and aggravated battery by indictment. The jury found appellant guilty of aggravated assault and aggravated battery, but was unable to reach a verdict on the felony murder charge. The trial court granted a mistrial as to the felony murder charge. The State announced its intent to retry appellant on the felony murder count and appellant filed a plea in bar on double jeopardy grounds. The trial court denied appellant's plea. On appeal to the Supreme Court, appellant argued that the State could not retry him for felony murder without violating the double jeopardy clause because it prosecuted him on the underlying counts of aggravated assault and aggravated battery, the jury found him guilty on those counts, and the State would have to prosecute him on the underlying counts again in order to obtain a felony murder conviction. Disagreeing with this contention, the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court. View "Smith v. Georgia" on Justia Law

Lou Ann Cassell inherited $220,000 from a relative. After consulting with advisors, she used the inherited funds to purchase a single-premium fixed annuity from National Life Insurance Company. Cassell was 65 years old at the time she purchased the annuity. The annuity agreement provided monthly annuity payments of $1,389.14, and guaranteed payments for 10 years regardless of when Cassell died, naming her children as beneficiaries should she die within the guaranteed payment period. Cassell was not authorized to withdraw any funds from the annuity, cancel the annuity, or change the payment terms of the agreement. She was authorized to assign the right to the annuity payments and to change the name of her beneficiaries during the guaranteed period. In May 2010, Cassell filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition in the Bankruptcy Court and included the annuity as an asset. However, she also listed the annuity as exempt property under OCGA 44-13-100 (a) (2) (E). The trustee objected, arguing the annuity payments did not meet two of the requirements necessary to qualify for the statutory exemption, specifically that the annuity was not funded by employment related wages or benefits and the payments due under the annuity were not "on account of age." The bankruptcy court disagreed and entered an order concluding that the two challenged requirements were met. It did not make a ruling with regard to the third requirement, that the payments be reasonably necessary for the support of the debtor or her dependents, because it concluded the parties had provided insufficient evidence pertaining to that issue. The United States District Court affirmed on appeal and remanded to the bankruptcy court for it to rule on the issue not addressed in its original order. Rather than litigate that issue in the bankruptcy court, the trustee conceded the annuity was reasonably necessary for the support of Cassell and appealed to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. After briefing and oral argument by the parties, the Eleventh Circuit recognized the absence of precedent on the dispositive issues of state law and certified its questions to the Georgia Supreme Court: (1) is a single-premium fixed annuity purchased with inherited funds an "annuity" for purposes of OCGA 44-13-100 (a) (2) (E); and (2) is a debtor's right to receive a payment from an annuity "on account of . . .age" for the purposes of OCGA 44-13-100 (a) (2) (E) if the annuity payments are subject to age-based federal tax treatment, if the annuitant purchased the annuity because of age, or if the annuity payments are calculated based on the age of the annuitant at the time the annuity was purchased. The Supreme Court found that a single-premium fixed annuity purchased with inherited funds may qualify as an exempt annuity under 44-13-100 (a) (2) (E) and that the determination of whether a right to receive payment from an annuity is "on account of" age for purposes of 44-13-100 (a) (2) (E) is not necessarily based on the existence of a single factor but requires consideration of a variety of factors pointing to the existence of a causal connection between the payee's age and the right to payment. View "Silliman v. Cassell" on Justia Law

Appellant Peter McGlashan and appellee Terrell Snowden own adjacent lots of real property in Ware County. McGlashan contracted to build a home on his lot and took exclusive possession of the completed home in July 2010. In March - April 2011, McGlashan discovered that his home encroached 1.11 acres onto Snowden's lot. After being informed by McGlashan of the encroachment, Snowden filed a complaint for ejectment, seeking to recover possession of his lot and the dwelling house and improvements located on it as well as damages for trespass, and seeking to be awarded fee-simple title to the home and improvements. McGlashan filed a counterclaim in which he raised an equitable claim for unjust enrichment and sought permission to remove the home and improvements from Snowden's lot. McGlashan also filed a third-party complaint against the builders of the home, seeking to recover from them the full value of McGlashan's loss should he lose the ejectment action or the cost of removing the dwelling and improvements from Snowden's lot should McGlashan have prevailed. After a hearing, the trial court granted summary judgment to Snowden. McGlashan appealed the judgment to the Supreme Court. The sole issue on appeal was whether the trial court erred when it granted summary judgment to Snowden on McGlashan's counterclaim for equitable unjust enrichment. Upon review, the Court disagreed with McGlashan's contention that the trial court erred. View "McGlashan v. Snowden" on Justia Law

James R. Harper, III, Jerry W. Chapman, and Jeffery L. Pombert appealed a trial court's orders denying their various motions challenging charges of theft and violation of the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations ("RICO") Act. The charges related to the property of Glock, Inc., and various entities associated with it, and the defendants raised issues regarding the relevant statutes of limitation. Harper, Chapman, and Pombert were indicted and charged through a pattern of "setting up entities and bank accounts and transferring Glock assets and funds through and among various of these entities and accounts, [thereby] divert[ing] and attempt[ing] to divert Glock funds to their own use and control." The defendants filed a general demurrer, special demurrer, plea in bar, and motion to dismiss, asserting various reasons why the indictment and prosecution were infirm, primarily that the relevant statutes of limitation had expired. The trial court denied the requested relief, and the defendants sought an interlocutory appeal with the Supreme Court. Upon review, the Supreme Court concluded that the trial court erred upon an erroneous conclusion that OCGA 17-3-2.2 applied with regard to Counts Two through Eleven in the indictment, and that the date that each crime became "known" within the meaning of OCGA 17-3-2 (2) was the date upon which each crime was reported to law enforcement officers. "But, as to any count of the indictment for which it cannot be shown that Mr. Glock was the owner of the property allegedly stolen, the correct date to apply in analyzing the statute of limitation is the date that the crime became known to the victim of the crime." Thus, the Court concluded, in analyzing this issue as to these counts, the trial court made no finding on threshold date determinations. Accordingly, the case was remanded for a determination, under the proper standard, of when the statutory limitation began. View "Harper v. Georgia" on Justia Law

Deandra Antwan Green filed a special demurrer alleging that his indictment was void because it failed to show that the charged offenses occurred on a date prior to the grand jury's return of the indictment. The trial court found that the court clerk had made an error in writing the date on which the indictment was returned in open court, but that the error was cured by the clerk's actions and testimony. The Supreme Court granted Green's application for interlocutory appeal to determine whether the trial court was correct in overruling the special demurrer. Upon review, the Court held that the clerk's clerical error in entering the indictment's return date was an immaterial defect that could be corrected. Therefore, the Court affirmed. View "Green v. Georgia" on Justia Law

The Supreme Court granted appellant Andrew Bishop's application for discretionary review of the final judgment and decree of divorce that awarded sole legal and physical custody of his two-year-old daughter to appellee Erika Baumgartner ("Mother") and gave no visitation to Bishop ("Father"). The sole issue on appeal was whether the trial court abused its discretion in denying visitation to Father. Since evidence in the record supports the trial court's exercise of its discretion, the Court concluded that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying visitation rights to Father. View "Bishop v. Baumgartner" on Justia Law