Georgia CommonsSupreme Court of Georgia
Court opinions
Opinions of the Supreme Court of Georgia filed from 2020-01-13 through 2026-10-14: 1,778 opinions. Each opinion has its full text and a plain-language summary. Browse by year and case type, or search by case name.
What this collection holds, and what it leaves out
- Opinions come from CourtListener and, for decisions it has not yet published, from the Supreme Court of Georgia's own website (62 opinions at present). When CourtListener publishes one of those decisions, its record replaces the court-sourced one and the old address redirects to it.
- The court's website index was last compared on 2026-10-16: every decision it listed through 2026-10-14 is here.
- Records whose text is shorter than 200 characters are not included.
- Each decision is counted once: where two records hold one decision (CourtListener's slip opinion and its Georgia Reports copy, or a court-website record and CourtListener's), the better copy is kept and the other record's id redirects to it (118 so far).
- The filing date is the decision date the court printed in the opinion for 63 opinions (every court-website record, and CourtListener records whose date disagreed with the caption); every other date is CourtListener's. For 1 court-website records whose PDF prints no date, the date is the day the court posted it.
- Spanish translations of the summaries exist for 1,778 of the 1,778 opinions with summaries (`lang=es`); the text of an opinion, and every quote from it, stays in English.
Wilmington Trust, National Association v. Ameritas Life Insurance Corp
The Supreme Court of Georgia clarified how courts should decide whether a third party, rather than the insured, actually obtained a life insurance policy, a question that determines whether the policy is an illegal wager on a human life.
In the Matter of Muhammad Abdul-Warit Abdur-Rahim
The Supreme Court of Georgia reinstated attorney Muhammad Abdul-Warit Abdur-Rahim to practice law after finding he had met the conditions the court had set for his return following an earlier interim suspension.
Biggs v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia vacated a Haralson County man's murder conviction proceedings, ruling the trial judge wrongly kept the jury from hearing that the victim had assaulted the defendant's future mother-in-law hours before the shooting.
Clark v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a DeKalb County man's murder conviction, ruling he waived his mistrial claim by not renewing it and that evidence of his jailhouse murder-for-hire plot against a witness was properly admitted.
FLAKES v. THE STATE (Two Cases)
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Jeffrey Flakes's murder conviction but reversed a new trial granted to his co-defendant Curtis Williams, ruling the prosecutor was not required to be disqualified even though she had once represented both men as a public defender.
Georgia Bone & Joint Surgeons, P.C. v. Keel
The Supreme Court of Georgia declined to hear an appeal in a medical malpractice case, but Justice Bethel wrote separately to explain why a prior ruling on expert testimony does not require a special jury instruction.
Gibson v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Dawson County man's convictions for killing his wife, rejecting his claim that his lawyer had an unexplained conflict of interest that undermined efforts to withdraw his guilty plea.
Graham v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Lowndes County man's felony murder conviction, rejecting claims that his trial lawyer was ineffective for not seeking certain jury instructions on self-defense and character evidence.
Huitron v. Toby, Warden
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld the denial of habeas relief for a man convicted of murdering his three-year-old daughter, finding that even if his appeal lawyer had a conflict of interest, it did not actually hurt his defense.
In the Matter of Paul Jason York
The Supreme Court of Georgia accepted attorney Paul Jason York's petition to voluntarily surrender his law license, ending a disciplinary case after York admitted forging a judge's and prosecutor's signatures to help a client.
Jenkins v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia dismissed a man's direct appeal from the denial of his statutory speedy trial demand, ruling he was required to use interlocutory appeal procedures instead and that the court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case as filed.
Kerns v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a DeKalb County man's murder conviction, ruling that removing him from his own trial for disruptive behavior and denying his repeated requests for a new attorney were within the trial judge's discretion.
NBCUNIVERSAL MEDIA, LLC v. WALKER
The Supreme Court of Georgia dismissed NBCUniversal's appeal of a $500,000 garnishment default judgment because the trial court never actually ruled on the constitutional questions NBCUniversal raised, so the high court had no jurisdiction to hear the case.
Riley v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Zajaliq Riley's felony murder conviction, ruling the State had no leniency deal with a key witness to disclose before trial and that his attorney's failure to probe the witness's separate pending charges did not affect the verdict.
SHELLS v. THE STATE (Two Cases)
The Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed the murder and robbery convictions of Lewis Shells and Marcus Leslie, rejecting challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence, trial procedures, evidence rulings, and claims that their lawyers were ineffective.
Taylor v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a DeKalb County woman's murder conviction, rejecting her claim that her trial lawyer failed to explore whether her codefendant was actually the shooter, because her appeal lacked evidence to support that claim.
Welsch v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Lowndes County man's murder convictions in a bench trial shooting death of two men, rejecting his claims that the evidence was too weak and that testimony about the victim's dying words was wrongly admitted.
State v. Lee
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Fulton County judge's decision to suppress a murder suspect's confession, ruling that police kept questioning him after he invoked his right to remain silent instead of waiting for him to genuinely reopen the conversation.
Burns v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Columbia County man's felony murder conviction, finding the evidence was sufficient and that his statements to police and autopsy photographs were properly admitted at trial.
Dickerson v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld John Lorenzo Dickerson's felony murder conviction for the shooting of Bernie Givens, ruling that any errors in evidence and jury instructions were harmless given strong evidence of his guilt.
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