Pierce v. State

Jason Pierce pleaded guilty to malice murder in 2013 and has since filed many post-conviction motions and civil lawsuits against judges, a clerk of court, and prison wardens. In 2018, a Fulton County judge issued a bill of peace, a court order meant to stop repeated, wasteful lawsuits, blocking Pierce from filing further papers in his criminal case and nine civil cases without prior court approval. In 2022, Pierce asked the trial court to vacate the bill of peace, but only as it applied to his criminal case, arguing the court had no power to issue such an order in a criminal matter. The trial court agreed and lifted the restriction for the criminal case, but left it in place for the civil cases. Pierce then appealed, arguing the civil restrictions should have been lifted too. The Supreme Court of Georgia found that because Pierce never asked the trial court to vacate the order as to the civil cases, he could not raise that argument for the first time on appeal.

Because Pierce never asked the trial court to vacate the bill of peace as it applied to the civil cases or future civil filings, and never obtained a ruling on that specific request, he could not raise the issue for the first time on appeal, so the Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed the trial court's order.

The decision reinforces that Georgia litigants must raise every specific request in the trial court first, or lose the chance to argue it on appeal. It also leaves in place a tool trial courts can use, the bill of peace, to curb repetitive filings by persistent litigants.

Affirmed

1. Georgia appellate courts generally will not consider an issue raised for the first time on appeal; a party must first present the specific request to the trial court and obtain a ruling on it to preserve the issue for review.
2. The record showed Pierce's 2022 motion asked only to vacate the bill of peace as it applied to his criminal case, and made no request or argument concerning the nine civil cases or future civil filings covered by the order.
3. Because Pierce never raised or obtained a ruling on the civil-case portion of the bill of peace below, his argument on appeal that the trial court should have vacated that portion too was not preserved for review.
4. The court also noted Pierce did not argue that plain error review, an exception allowing review of certain unpreserved errors, should apply, and no prior case had applied plain error review to a bill of peace's scope, so the claim could not be considered on any basis.

• bill of peace
• vexatious litigant restrictions
• appellate preservation of issues
• Fulton County
• malice murder conviction