ATLANTA — In a recent opinion from the Georgia Supreme Court, the state’s justices revealed that starting next July, they would no longer review or rule on murder cases in Georgia.
The change was included in a concurring opinion added to the state’s highest court’s decision on a malice murder case from 2019 in Fulton County.
According to the court, the volume of murder case appeals overseen by the GSC is too many, and has been for too long, with the volume steadily increasing over the years.
Georgia Chief Justice Nels S.D. Peterson wrote that he would be actively seeking to enact a recommendation made by a previous chief justice in the 1980s to reduce how many of these cases the state’s high court takes on, with the exception of death penalty cases.
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To make that happen, Peterson wrote in his ruling that the court would stop taking on murder case appeals starting in July 2027.
“I join in full the Court’s decision affirming Coleman’s convictions. I write separately to heed then-Chief Justice Benham’s call nearly 30 years ago and begin the process for ending our purely voluntary exercise of jurisdiction over direct appeals in non-death-penalty murder cases,” Peterson wrote.
According to the judge’s writing, it’s largely due to caseload and what resources the GSC has available.
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With very narrow exceptions, Peterson wrote the GSC may take on certain death penalty cases, but would otherwise be staying out of murder cases starting next summer.
Peterson said in the opinion that he was basing it on the number of cases the high court has handled for murder opinions.
From 2022 to 2024, Peterson wrote that murder opinions from the state Supreme Court had made up between 55% and 59% of all published opinions, but only 10% of their caseload.
Of the court opinions put out in that time period, 379 were about murder cases.
Peterson’s concern is with finding a way to manage cases when the Court makes a “material mistake.”
“If we make a material mistake in one of these cases (which is nearly unavoidable given the volume of murder cases we review), only this Court (or, in rare instances, the United States Supreme Court) can correct that mistake,” Peterson wrote. “But correcting our own mistakes is not easy — we have to wait for the issue to be squarely raised by the parties in a later case, usually years after the initial error, and even then, stare decisis often will prevent us from changing course.”
He added in the opinion that the Court of appeals in Georgia is better suited to doing initial reviews in non-death penalty murder cases, which allows the GSC to correct important mistakes more quickly.
Separately, Peterson said the court precedent for murder cases as it currently stands is “unwieldy and overturned more often than our own non-murder cases.”
From 2018 to 2025, Peterson said 20 opinions were issued that either overruled or disapproved of prior cases. He said 13 of those cases were murder appeals and how current policy makes GSC the first layer of appellate review.
It’s a standing Peterson said had to change.
“The volume of our precedent is problematic for both lawyers and judges; it makes researching any frequently occurring issue extremely difficult because lawyers and judges must wade through vast oceans of caselaw to get answers to even simple questions,” Peterson wrote.
In terms of practical effect, Peterson said in just the past three years, the Georgia Supreme Court has issued more than 200 binding opinions about ineffective assistance of counsel, adding that even talented judges and lawyers who keep up with court proceedings have found it “impossible to read the vast number of opinions we issue every year on routine issues that occur regularly in criminal cases.”
He said it “should not be so difficult to keep up,” also saying that murder cases by their very nature are “messy in ways that invite disagreement” and make it difficult or impossible to clearly resolve questions in court, as GSC opinions have statewide and system-wide implications.
“We are one of the busiest state supreme courts in the nation. And even without murder direct appeals, our published opinion caseload would still be heavy compared to other states,” Peterson said, citing data showing that other than North Dakota, Georgia issued more opinions than any other state supreme court in the United States.
The number of murder appeals being decided by the GSC is making the process “inefficient” and the “law less consistent and reliable,” which he said was making the Court’s other work difficult.
As a result, the court will no longer take on murder cases, unless it meets an extremely narrow standard related to death penalty case decisions.
“Effective starting with cases docketed July 1, 2027, we will cease exercising direct appellate jurisdiction over all appeals in murder cases” when the district attorney has not given the defense notice they are seeking the death penalty.
All cases that are docketed for appeal in a murder conviction will instead be seen in the Court of Appeals.
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