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 2026-10-17: 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.
Ballinger, Warden v. Watkins
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a habeas court's decision to grant Joseph Watkins a new trial after finding that a juror secretly drove the crime route herself during deliberations to test the state's timeline theory.
Caviston v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a man's murder conviction for killing his 92-year-old mother, ruling that letting the jury hear he had written a novel called 'The Philosophy of Murder' did not require a new trial.
Davis v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Fulton County man's murder conviction, rejecting his claims that his speedy trial rights were violated, that evidence about the victim's friend was wrongly excluded, and that his lawyer was ineffective.
Harvey v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that a Fayette County woman's second attempt to reopen her 2005 guilty pleas to murdering her grandparents came far too late, and that trial courts no longer have any power to rule on out-of-time appeal motions at all.
In the Matter of Tamorra A. Boyd
The Supreme Court of Georgia sent an attorney discipline case back for a hearing on whether a default judgment against a Georgia lawyer should be lifted, finding she had not simply ignored the State Bar's investigation.
MITCHELL v. THE STATE (Two Cases)
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld the murder convictions of Taiquan Mitchell and Deon Dorsey, rejecting claims that the evidence was too weak and that a mistrial should have been granted after two jurors were seen sipping alcoholic drinks at lunch.
Moore v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Fulton County man's murder conviction, rejecting claims that his trial lawyer was ineffective and that the judge improperly pressured a co-defendant to testify or commented on the evidence.
STATE OF GEORGIA v. FEDERAL DEFENDER PROGRAM, INC.
The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that an email exchange between a deputy attorney general and death-penalty defense lawyers formed a valid written contract, letting a trial judge block Virgil Presnell's execution while the state honors that deal.
Smith v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that a Gwinnett County man convicted of murdering his infant son is entitled to a hearing on his claim that new medical science undermines the shaken baby diagnosis used against him at trial.
Smith v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Lamar County man's malice murder conviction for shooting his neighbor, rejecting claims that the shooting was accidental, that evidence was wrongly admitted, and that his trial lawyer was ineffective.
TABOR v. THE STATE (Two Cases)
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld the murder convictions of Tyree Tabor and Donny Spear, rejecting claims that their lawyers were constitutionally deficient and that the trial judge wrongly denied a request to try the two men separately.
Turner v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Coweta County man's murder conviction for shooting a fellow passenger in the back of the head, rejecting his argument that the witnesses against him were not believable.
Carter v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Houston County man's murder conviction for killing his 81-year-old grandmother, rejecting his claims that the evidence was too weak and that his lawyer and the trial court mishandled hearsay testimony.
Eaker v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Cherokee County man's murder conviction, rejecting his claims that his lawyer should have pursued an accidental-gun-malfunction defense and that new evidence justified a new trial.
Esposito v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that trial courts must follow Court of Appeals precedent even if a trial judge thinks it wrong, but dismissed this appeal because the error did not affect the outcome of a death row inmate's bid for DNA testing.
Young v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Tia Young's felony murder conviction in her husband's shooting death, finding the circumstantial evidence sufficient and rejecting her claims about a joint trial and jury instructions.
Ammons v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that police cannot use a DUI suspect's refusal to take a preliminary breath test or cooperate with field sobriety tests as evidence at trial, overruling a 29-year-old precedent. The court also rejected a separate constitutional challenge to using blood test refusals as evidence.
Dougherty v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that a man convicted of felony murder cannot get his motion for a new trial reviewed on the merits, because of earlier appellate rulings that locked in when his conviction became final. The court vacated an out-of-time appeal and dismissed his latest appeal.
Jones v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Savannah man's felony murder conviction but threw out his conviction for threatening a witness because prosecutors waited too long to charge him with that crime.
McElrath v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that Damien McElrath can be retried for his mother's killing, holding that a jury's earlier inconsistent verdicts (guilty but mentally ill on one murder count, not guilty by reason of insanity on another) were legally void and did not bar a second trial.
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