Skip to content
Georgia Commons
Menu

Official Code of Georgia Annotated

Title 17. CRIMINAL PROCEDURE · Chapter 21. COLD CASE MURDER REINVESTIGATION

17-21-2. Definitions.

Active

Current through: Including Acts of the 2025 Regular Session of the General Assembly.

  1. As used in this chapter, the term:

  2. (1)

    “Agency” means a law enforcement agency with the jurisdiction to engage in the detection, investigation, or prosecution of a cold case murder.#

  3. (2)

    “Cold case” means a homicide:#

    1. (A)

      That was committed more than three years prior to the date of an application by a designated person;#

    2. (B)

      That was previously investigated by an agency; and#

    3. (C)

      For which all probative leads have been exhausted or no likely perpetrator has been identified.#

  4. (3)

    “Designated person” means an immediate family member or their designated legal representative who shall be a member in good standing with the State Bar of Georgia.#

  5. (4)

    “Immediate family member” means a parent, parent-in-law, grandparent, grandparent-in-law, sibling, spouse, child, or stepchild of a victim or any person who exercised in loco parentis control over a victim under the age of 18 years.#

  6. (5)

    “Murder” means any criminal offense provided under Code Section 16-5-1.#

  7. (6)

    “Probative lead” means evidence which is sufficiently useful to prove an element of the crime, which was not identified or determined as part of the previous investigation by the agency.#

  8. (7)

    “Victim” means a natural person who died as a result of a cold case murder.#

The notes below are printed with the section but are not enacted law (O.C.G.A. § 1-1-1(c)). They are shown apart from the text.

History

Code 1981, § 17-21-2, enacted by Ga. L. 2023, p. 106, § 1/HB 88, effective July 1, 2023; Ga. L. 2024, p. 1052, § 6(14)/SB 448, effective July 1, 2024.

Amendments

The 2024 amendment, effective July 1, 2024, part of an Act to revise, modernize, and correct the Code, rewrote paragraph (2), which read: “(2) ‘Cold case’ means a homicide: “(A) That was committed more than three years prior to the date of an application by a designated person under subsection (c) of this Code section; and “(B) That was previously investigated by an agency; and “(C) For which all probative leads have been exhausted; or “(D) For which no likely perpetrator has been identified.”; and, substituted “State Bar of Georgia” for “Georgia State Bar” at the end of paragraph (3).

Read the official page (the state's PDF, opened at the page this text was read from).

Current through: Including Acts of the 2025 Regular Session of the General Assembly.

Text read from t17-(v15)-pdf.pdf, Volume V15, 2020 edition, 2025 supplement, pages 172 to 173; merge action: added; file SHA-256 9ed85bfde942.