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 2026-10-19: 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.
Sawyer v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a DeKalb County man's felony murder conviction for killing his girlfriend's two-year-old son, rejecting his claim that his trial lawyer was ineffective for not objecting to several pieces of testimony.
Smith v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Omari Smith's felony murder conviction for a Fulton County shooting, rejecting his claims that the evidence was too weak, that he should have had a separate trial, and that his lawyers failed him.
State v. Hamilton
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a trial court's decision to grant Marlina Hamilton immunity from prosecution in the killing of her ex-husband, finding she showed by a preponderance of the evidence that she acted in self-defense.
Tolbert v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Columbus man's murder conviction, ruling his post-arrest confession was voluntary and that evidence of other robberies he committed was properly shown to the jury.
Westbrook v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a DeKalb County man's murder conviction, rejecting challenges to his warrantless arrest, a phone lineup identification, and a recorded jail phone call used against him at trial.
Wilkins v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Savannah man's convictions for the murders of his former boss and coworker, ruling that testimony about his silence when an accomplice implicated him was properly admitted and that his trial lawyer's failures did not change the trial's outcome.
CITY OF ATLANTA v. ATLANTA INDEPENDENT SCHOOL SYSTEM
The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that Atlanta Public Schools' lawsuit over a small City of Atlanta annexation was not a real legal dispute the courts could decide, because the annexed property had no effect on the school system.
COEN v. APTEAN, INC.
The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that punitive damages can generally be recovered in Georgia's statutory abusive litigation claims, rejecting decades of Court of Appeals decisions that said otherwise.
DELOACH v. THE STATE (And Vice Versa)
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Arheem DeLoach's murder conviction for killing Jamell Law but reversed a trial court order that had granted him a new trial on a separate murder charge for killing Rashad Biggins.
Gittens v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld the murder conviction of a Telfair State Prison inmate who stabbed a fellow inmate during a fight over a cell phone, rejecting claims of insufficient evidence, ineffective counsel, and newly discovered alibi witnesses.
Howell v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Dalton man's murder conviction for beating a homeless man to death, but corrected a sentencing error by vacating separate assault and battery convictions that should have merged into the murder count.
In the Matter of Melvin T. Johnson
The Supreme Court of Georgia disbarred attorney Melvin T. Johnson after finding he repeatedly neglected clients, mishandled client funds, forged documents, and ignored the State Bar's disciplinary process across five separate cases.
Lee v. Smith, II
The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that trial judges cannot exclude a late-identified expert witness in a civil case just because the witness missed a scheduling order deadline, and laid out four factors judges must weigh instead.
London v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a DeKalb County man's murder conviction, rejecting arguments that the evidence was too weak, that a witness's hearsay statements were wrongly admitted, and that his defense lawyer was ineffective.
Mitchell v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Muscogee County man's murder conviction, rejecting claims that his trial lawyer was ineffective and that the trial court wrongly allowed a detective's testimony and an autopsy photo into evidence.
Mitchell v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Fulton County man's murder conviction, rejecting his claim that his trial lawyer botched her strategy of discrediting a jailhouse informant who testified he confessed to the killing.
Morgan v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Chatham County woman's guilty but mentally ill convictions for drowning her two infant daughters, finding that while some crime scene video should not have been shown to the jury, the mistake did not affect the verdict.
Naples v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Michael Naples's murder conviction in the death of 17-month-old Kaylee Johnson, ruling the trial court properly allowed evidence of his violence toward two other children to show his intent, and that his trial lawyer's decisions were reasonable strategy rather than ineffective assistance.
Richardson v. State
The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a DeKalb County man's murder conviction, rejecting his arguments that a mistrial should have been granted, gang evidence should have been excluded, and his lawyer was ineffective.
State v. Bryant
The Supreme Court of Georgia sent a murder case back to a Chatham County judge after finding his order excluding evidence for discovery violations too unclear to review, because it was unclear whether he actually found the prosecution acted in bad faith.
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