Sims v. State

Stacey Sims pleaded guilty in 2010 to six counts of malice murder and other charges connected to a violent home invasion, in exchange for the State dropping its pursuit of the death penalty. He did not appeal on time. Years later, in 2020, he asked the trial court to let him withdraw his guilty plea, citing a prior Supreme Court of Georgia case, Collier v. State, and asking for a hearing. The trial court dismissed his request because it came ten years after sentencing, long after the legal deadline tied to the court's term. On appeal, Sims argued for the first time that his plea lawyer's ineffectiveness and abandonment caused the delay. The Supreme Court of Georgia found that Sims never made that argument to the trial court, so it could not be considered now, and that his motion was filed far outside the deadline in any event. The court affirmed the dismissal.

A motion to withdraw a guilty plea must be filed within the same term of court as the sentence, and a defendant who fails to argue in the trial court that counsel's ineffectiveness caused the delay cannot raise that claim for the first time on appeal; the trial court properly dismissed the motion for lack of jurisdiction.

The decision reinforces a strict deadline: Georgia defendants must move to withdraw a guilty plea within the same court term as their sentencing, and must raise any claim about their lawyer's failures in the trial court first, or lose the chance to raise it later.

Affirmed

1. The court explained that under Collier v. State, a defendant seeking an out-of-time appeal must show his trial counsel's ineffective assistance caused him to miss the appeal deadline, but this case involved a motion to withdraw a guilty plea, not a motion for an out-of-time appeal, so Collier's mandatory hearing rule did not automatically apply.
2. The court noted that Sims had never told the trial court that his plea counsel's ineffectiveness deprived him of the right to timely withdraw his plea; he raised that argument for the first time on appeal, so under Georgia's general rule that issues not raised below cannot be heard on appeal, the claim was not preserved.
3. Applying settled Georgia law that a motion to withdraw a guilty plea must be filed within the same court term as the sentencing, the court found Sims's motion, filed in 2020 for a 2010 sentence, was filed roughly ten years too late.
4. Because the term of court had long expired and Sims had not properly raised an ineffective-assistance excuse in the trial court, the court concluded the trial court correctly ruled it lacked jurisdiction to consider the motion.

• guilty plea withdrawal
• murder conviction
• ineffective assistance of counsel
• court term deadlines
• Tift County