Tanner v. State

910 S.E.2d 577, 320 Ga. 557

• Court: Supreme Court of Georgia
• Decided: December 20, 2024
• Docket: S24A1076
• Status: Published

Opinion

320 Ga. 557 FINAL COPY

S24A1076. TANNER v. THE STATE.

BOGGS, Chief Justice.

Appellant Dewayne David Tanner challenges the trial court’s

dismissal of his 2024 motion to withdraw his 2017 guilty pleas to

malice murder and other crimes in connection with the shooting

death of his wife, Stephanie Tanner, and the non-fatal shooting of

his mother-in-law, Beverly Broach. The trial court properly

dismissed Appellant’s motion as untimely, and we therefore affirm.

In April 2017, Appellant entered his guilty pleas in Floyd

County Superior Court and was sentenced to serve life in prison

without the possibility of parole plus 25 years. Seven years later, in

April 2024, Appellant filed a pro se motion to withdraw his guilty

pleas, contending among other things that his plea counsel rendered

ineffective assistance and that his guilty pleas were not knowingly

and voluntarily entered. The trial court dismissed the motion on the

ground that it was untimely and the court therefore lacked jurisdiction to consider it. Appellant filed a timely notice of appeal.

“It is well settled that when the term of court has expired in

which a defendant was sentenced pursuant to a guilty plea, the trial

court lacks jurisdiction to allow the withdrawal of the plea.” Kerch

v. State, 301 Ga. 814, 814 (804 SE2d 417) (2017) (cleaned up). On

Monday, April 24, 2017, during the March 2017 term of court,

Appellant entered his guilty pleas and the trial court sentenced him

on them. The term of court expired a week later when a new term

commenced on Monday, May 1, 2017. See OCGA § 15-6-3 (33)

(stating that the terms of the Floyd County Superior Court

“commence . . . [on the] [s]econd Monday in January, March, July,

and September and first Monday in May and November”).

In his pro se brief on appeal, Appellant contends that within 30

days of his sentencing, he sent a letter to the Floyd County Superior

Court clerk asking to take back his guilty pleas, and that she

responded to his letter. But the record on appeal contains no such

letter or response, and in any event, Appellant does not contend that

he filed his letter prior to the commencement of the new term of

2 court on May 1, 2017. Almost a year after Appellant was sentenced,

on April 5, 2018, he filed a motion to modify or reduce his sentence,

which was denied, but he did not file an actual motion to withdraw

his guilty pleas until April 29, 2024, more than seven years after

sentencing. The trial court therefore lacked jurisdiction to consider

Appellant’s motion to withdraw his guilty pleas and properly

dismissed it as untimely. See Bankston v. State, 307 Ga. 656, 657

(837 SE2d 788) (2020) (“A trial court lacks jurisdiction to permit the

withdrawal of a guilty plea once the term of court has expired in

which the defendant was sentenced.” (cleaned up)). Accordingly, we

affirm the trial court’s judgment.

Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur.

3 Decided December 20, 2024.

Murder. Floyd Superior Court. Before Judge Sparks.

Dewayne D. Tanner, pro se.

Leigh E. Patterson, District Attorney, Elisabeth M. Giuliani,

Assistant District Attorney; Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General,

Beth A. Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Meghan H. Hill, Michael

A. Oldham, Clint C. Malcolm, Senior Assistant Attorneys General,

for appellee.