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 2026-10-18: 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.
Rawls v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia dismissed as moot a man's appeal seeking free trial transcripts, finding that the State had already provided him with all the transcripts that actually exist.
Renfro v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld David Renfro's murder conviction, ruling that even if police wrongly used pre-arrest statements without giving him Miranda warnings, the mistake made no difference because other evidence proved the same points.
Rouzan v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia vacated a trial court order that had granted a Richmond County man an out-of-time appeal, holding that trial courts have no authority to decide such motions after the court's recent ruling in Cook v. State.
Smith v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Jared Smith's murder conviction, ruling that even if a medical examiner should not have offered opinions about blood-spatter patterns, any error was harmless given the other strong evidence against him.
Watkins v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Bibb County teenager's felony murder conviction for choking his 19-year-old sister to death, rejecting his argument that the trial judge should have found him guilty of the lesser crime of voluntary manslaughter instead.
In the Matter of Mark Preston Jones
The Supreme Court of Georgia accepted a Columbus lawyer's request to give up his law license after he pleaded guilty to felony charges including influencing a witness, treating the surrender as equivalent to disbarment.
In the Matter of Donald Richard Donovan
The Supreme Court of Georgia accepted a former Paulding County district attorney's petition to voluntarily give up his law license after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for lying in a sworn statement about a sexual harassment complaint.
Alexander v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that a man convicted of sexually abusing his stepdaughters must prove the closed courtroom actually changed his trial's outcome to win an ineffective assistance claim, not merely that it was unfair.
Cook v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia eliminated the decades-old practice of letting convicted defendants ask a trial court directly for a late appeal, ruling that habeas corpus is now the only proper way to seek that relief.
MAYNARD v. SNAPCHAT, INC
The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that Snapchat's maker can be sued for negligently designing its Speed Filter, rejecting the idea that a manufacturer never owes a safety duty when a third party misuses a product intentionally or unlawfully.
McInerney v. McInerney
The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that Georgia's forum non conveniens law can be used to transfer or dismiss a divorce case without violating the state constitution's rule that divorce cases be tried where the defendant lives.
Rutledge v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that a man who pled guilty to murder could not ask a trial court for an out-of-time appeal, because such motions no longer have any legal basis in Georgia courts. His case was sent back so the trial court can dismiss it rather than rule on its merits.
EASON v. LUNDY
The Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed a lower court's judgment in a case between Eason and Lundy without writing a full opinion, using a court rule that allows summary affirmance.
BLACK VOTERS MATTER FUND, INC. v. KEMP, GOVERNOR (Five Cases)
The Supreme Court of Georgia threw out challenges to a law splitting the Augusta Judicial Circuit into two circuits, ruling that the voting rights group Black Voters Matter Fund never proved it had legal standing to sue.
Burns v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that 2016 changes to Georgia's grand jury notice laws for police officers are procedural, not substantive, so they applied to an Atlanta officer's 2018 indictment even though the shooting happened before the law changed.
DOE v. SAINT JOSEPH'S CATHOLIC CHURCH
The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that a man who says a priest sexually abused him as a boy in the 1970s can still pursue most of his claims against the Catholic Church, because the two-year deadline to sue may have been paused by alleged fraud.
Daniels v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a 14-year-old's murder conviction, ruling that his confessions to police after hours of questioning were properly admitted because he knowingly and voluntarily waived his Miranda rights.
Graham v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Haleem Graham's felony murder and home invasion convictions, ruling that circumstantial evidence tying him to his co-defendants before and after the killing was enough to support the jury's verdict.
Hooper v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Timone Hooper's murder conviction, rejecting claims that his lawyer should have requested a jury instruction on corroborating confessions and that spectators were wrongly excluded during juror questioning.
Inquiry Concerning Judge Jadawnya Baker
The Supreme Court of Georgia approved a public reprimand for Atlanta Municipal Court Judge JaDawnya Baker after she admitted to repeatedly dismissing cases she should have simply rejected during guilty plea hearings.
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