Cooper v. State

Jaquez Cooper was 16 years old when he was arrested in connection with a 2018 shooting death in DeKalb County. A grand jury indicted him for murder within 180 days of his arrest, as Georgia law requires for juveniles charged with crimes that fall under superior court jurisdiction, but a later superseding indictment came more than a year after his arrest. Cooper argued the superior court lost jurisdiction over his case because that second indictment missed the 180-day deadline, and he also argued his trial lawyer was ineffective for filing this challenge too late. The Supreme Court of Georgia rejected both arguments. Relying on a recent decision interpreting the same statute, the court held that once the original indictment on a qualifying charge is timely, a later reindictment outside the 180-day window does not take away the superior court's jurisdiction. Because the trial court had already considered and rejected the jurisdiction argument on its merits, Cooper could not show he was harmed by any delay in raising it.

Under OCGA § 17-7-50.1, a superior court retains jurisdiction over a juvenile defendant's case as long as at least one charge within the superior court's jurisdiction was presented to a grand jury within 180 days of detention; a later reindictment of the same defendant outside that 180-day window does not strip the court of jurisdiction.

The ruling confirms that Georgia prosecutors can reindict juvenile defendants on updated or additional charges well after the original 180-day deadline without losing the case to juvenile court, as long as the first indictment on a superior-court-level charge was timely.

Judgment affirmed

1. The court applied its recent precedent interpreting Georgia's 180-day juvenile indictment statute (OCGA § 17-7-50.1), which requires a grand jury to return at least one qualifying charge against a detained child within 180 days for the superior court to keep jurisdiction over the case.
2. The court found it undisputed that the original indictment charging Appellant with malice murder, a charge within the superior court's exclusive jurisdiction for children 13 to 17, was returned within 180 days of his arrest.
3. Because the original indictment was timely, the later superseding indictment returned more than a year after arrest did not deprive the superior court of jurisdiction, so the trial court correctly denied the plea in bar (a pretrial motion challenging the court's power to hear the case).
4. Turning to the ineffective-assistance claim, the court applied the Strickland standard, which requires showing both deficient performance by the lawyer and a reasonable probability the outcome would have differed without that deficiency.
5. The court assumed without deciding that trial counsel was deficient for filing the jurisdiction challenge late, but found no prejudice because the trial judge had actually ruled on the merits of the challenge rather than rejecting it as untimely, and because the challenge itself lacked merit under current law.

• murder conviction
• juvenile jurisdiction
• 180-day indictment deadline
• ineffective assistance of counsel
• plea in bar