--- title: Tanner v. State collection: opinions id: S24A1076 cite_as: Tanner v. State, 320 Ga. 557 (2024) canonical_url: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S24A1076 md_url: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S24A1076.md text_url: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S24A1076/text source_url: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/10680191/tanner-v-state/ date: 2024-12-20 status: published corpus_version: opinions-2026-09-14 license: Public record of the Supreme Court of Georgia, via CourtListener and the court's own website; see about.md publisher: Georgia Commons, an independent project of Georgia Civic Data. Not the State of Georgia. Not legal advice. up: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/2024.md previous: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S24A1065.md next: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S24A1032.md index: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/index.md omitted: opinion extras omitted_chars: 1907 omitted_url: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S24A1076.md?full=1 docket: S24A1076 citation: 320 Ga. 557 court: Supreme Court of Georgia case_type: criminal appeal authoring_justice: Boggs disposition: Affirmed vote: All the Justices concur word_count: 548 date_filed_source: courtlistener citations: - 910 S.E.2d 577 record_source: courtlistener legal_areas: - criminal law - criminal procedure upstream_id: "10680191" summaries_model: claude-sonnet-5 --- # Tanner v. State Supreme Court of Georgia, docket S24A1076, filed 2024-12-20, 320 Ga. 557. ## Opinion 320 Ga. 557 FINAL COPY S24A1076. TANNER v. THE STATE. BOGGS, Chief Justice. Appellant Dewayne David Tanner challenges the trial court’s dismissal of his 2024 motion to withdraw his 2017 guilty pleas to malice murder and other crimes in connection with the shooting death of his wife, Stephanie Tanner, and the non-fatal shooting of his mother-in-law, Beverly Broach. The trial court properly dismissed Appellant’s motion as untimely, and we therefore affirm. In April 2017, Appellant entered his guilty pleas in Floyd County Superior Court and was sentenced to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole plus 25 years. Seven years later, in April 2024, Appellant filed a pro se motion to withdraw his guilty pleas, contending among other things that his plea counsel rendered ineffective assistance and that his guilty pleas were not knowingly and voluntarily entered. The trial court dismissed the motion on the ground that it was untimely and the court therefore lacked jurisdiction to consider it. Appellant filed a timely notice of appeal. “It is well settled that when the term of court has expired in which a defendant was sentenced pursuant to a guilty plea, the trial court lacks jurisdiction to allow the withdrawal of the plea.” Kerch v. State, 301 Ga. 814, 814 (804 SE2d 417) (2017) (cleaned up). On Monday, April 24, 2017, during the March 2017 term of court, Appellant entered his guilty pleas and the trial court sentenced him on them. The term of court expired a week later when a new term commenced on Monday, May 1, 2017. See OCGA § 15-6-3 (33) (stating that the terms of the Floyd County Superior Court “commence . . . [on the] [s]econd Monday in January, March, July, and September and first Monday in May and November”). In his pro se brief on appeal, Appellant contends that within 30 days of his sentencing, he sent a letter to the Floyd County Superior Court clerk asking to take back his guilty pleas, and that she responded to his letter. But the record on appeal contains no such letter or response, and in any event, Appellant does not contend that he filed his letter prior to the commencement of the new term of court on May 1, 2017. Almost a year after Appellant was sentenced, on April 5, 2018, he filed a motion to modify or reduce his sentence, which was denied, but he did not file an actual motion to withdraw his guilty pleas until April 29, 2024, more than seven years after sentencing. The trial court therefore lacked jurisdiction to consider Appellant’s motion to withdraw his guilty pleas and properly dismissed it as untimely. See Bankston v. State, 307 Ga. 656, 657 (837 SE2d 788) (2020) (“A trial court lacks jurisdiction to permit the withdrawal of a guilty plea once the term of court has expired in which the defendant was sentenced.” (cleaned up)). Accordingly, we affirm the trial court’s judgment. Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur. Decided December 20, 2024. Murder. Floyd Superior Court. Before Judge Sparks. Dewayne D. Tanner, pro se. Leigh E. Patterson, District Attorney, Elisabeth M. Giuliani, Assistant District Attorney; Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Beth A. Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Meghan H. Hill, Michael A. Oldham, Clint C. Malcolm, Senior Assistant Attorneys General, for appellee. ## Summaries written by Georgia Commons The following was written by claude-sonnet-5 from the opinion above and is not part of the court's opinion. Quote the opinion, not the summary. The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld the dismissal of a man's 2024 request to withdraw his 2017 guilty pleas to murdering his wife, ruling the request came far too late for any court to consider it. ### Plain-language summary Dewayne David Tanner pleaded guilty in 2017 in Floyd County Superior Court to malice murder and other crimes for shooting and killing his wife, Stephanie Tanner, and non-fatally shooting his mother-in-law, Beverly Broach. He was sentenced to life without parole plus 25 years. Seven years later, in April 2024, Tanner filed a motion on his own behalf asking to withdraw his guilty pleas, arguing his plea lawyer had been ineffective and that his pleas were not truly knowing and voluntary. The trial court dismissed his motion, finding it had no power to even consider it because the request came far too late. Tanner appealed, claiming he had tried to withdraw his pleas by letter within 30 days, but the record contained no such letter. The Supreme Court of Georgia agreed with the trial court and affirmed, holding that once the court term in which he was sentenced ended, no court had jurisdiction to let him take back his pleas. ### Holding, as summarized A trial court loses jurisdiction to allow withdrawal of a guilty plea once the term of court in which the defendant was sentenced has expired; because Tanner waited more than seven years to file his motion, long after that term ended, the trial court properly dismissed it as untimely. ### Disposition Affirmed. All the Justices concur. ### Why it matters The ruling reinforces a strict, well-established time limit in Georgia: defendants who plead guilty must move to withdraw their pleas before the court term ends, usually within days or weeks, or lose that option permanently, even if they later raise serious claims like ineffective counsel. > The summarized reasoning, checked quotes, suggested questions, and the CourtListener opinion records (1,907 characters) are at https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S24A1076.md?full=1