Gray v. Georgia
Annotate this CaseThe Georgia Supreme Court granted certiorari review in this matter to determine whether the trial court had jurisdiction to modify a sentence outside the one-year period after a sentence was imposed, as authorized under OCGA 17-10-1 (f), when the motion to modify was filed within the one-year period. The Court of Appeals held in Gray v. Georgia, 832 SE2d 857 (2019), that trial courts lacked jurisdiction after one year, irrespective of when the motion to modify sentence is filed. After the enactment of OCGA 17-10-1 (f) in 2001, despite the change in language from previous statutes, the Supreme Court found the Court of Appeals continued to follow the common-law rule as to motions filed within the term of court or before the statutory deadline. "The key question, then, is whether the addition of the word 'jurisdiction' to the statute’s grant of 'power and authority' to the trial court clearly overrides the common-law rule, and we conclude that it does not." Moreover, the Supreme Court disagreed with the Court of Appeals that the legislature rejected the common-law rule because the legislature did not expressly write the common-law rule into the current version of the statute. The Court, thus, concluded that the text of OCGA 17-10-1 (f) did not expressly or by necessary implication contravene the common-law rule, and the Court of Appeals erred in determining otherwise. Judgment was reversed and the matter remanded for further proceedings.
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