Tolbert v. Toole
| Decision Date | 11 December 2014 |
| Docket Number | No. S14A1158.,S14A1158. |
| Parties | TOLBERT v. TOOLE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
296 Ga. 357
767 S.E.2d 24
TOLBERT
v.
TOOLE.
No. S14A1158.
Supreme Court of Georgia.
Dec. 11, 2014.
Reconsideration Denied January 7, 2015.
David L. Tolbert, pro se.
Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Atty. Gen., Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Asst. Atty. Gen., Samuel S. Olens, Atty. Gen., Katherine Lee Iannuzzi, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.
Opinion
NAHMIAS, Justice.
In 2009, a jury found David Tolbert guilty of armed robbery and other crimes, and he was sentenced to life in prison. The Court of Appeals affirmed his convictions on direct appeal. See Tolbert v. State, 313 Ga.App. 46, 720 S.E.2d 244 (2011). Tolbert then filed a petition for habeas corpus alleging, among other things, that his pro se notice of appeal from the trial court's pretrial oral ruling denying his motion for discharge and acquittal had never been resolved and therefore deprived the court of jurisdiction to try him, rendering his resulting judgments of conviction void. The habeas court denied the petition.
This Court granted Tolbert's application to appeal to consider whether the habeas court erred in ruling that Tolbert had procedurally defaulted his jurisdictional claim based on the pretrial, pro se notice of appeal. We conclude that the habeas court's procedural default ruling was erroneous, but we also conclude that the record on appeal does not support Tolbert's jurisdictional claim. Accordingly, we affirm the denial of habeas relief under the right-for-any-reason doctrine. See Bunn v. State, 291 Ga. 183, 193, 728 S.E.2d 569 (2012).
1. On August 21, 2007, a Houston County grand jury indicted Tolbert and a co-defendant for armed robbery, aggravated battery, aggravated sodomy, and other crimes related to a brutal home invasion.1 The trial court appointed the public defender's office to
represent Tolbert, and attorney Robert Surrency was assigned to the case. On October 26, 2007, through counsel, Tolbert filed a statutory speedy trial demand.2 At some point before February 2008, the trial court struck the demand during an off-the-record discussion with counsel for Tolbert and the State, but without Tolbert present and without entering a written order. On March 12, 2008, the court granted Tolbert leave to file another, out-of-time statutory speedy trial demand, but he never filed one.
The case was then set for trial in August 2008, with a motions hearing set for July 25. On July 15, Tolbert, who was still represented by Surrency, filed a pro se motion to remove counsel and a pro se motion for discharge and acquittal on statutory speedy trial grounds. At a hearing on July 17, the trial court orally denied both of Tolbert's pro se motions. Tolbert then invoked his constitutional right to represent himself, see generally Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806, 95 S.Ct. 2525, 45 L.Ed.2d 562 (1975), and the court discussed with Tolbert why that might be a bad idea. As the hearing proceeded, the court said that it was relieving Surrency and the public defender's office from representing Tolbert and indicated that it was
signing an order to that effect. However, no such order appears in the record on appeal.3
Two weeks later,4 on July 31, the public defender's office filed a “Notice of Withdrawal” as counsel of record for Tolbert, but the record on appeal does not contain the required order permitting withdrawal or even a request for such an order.5 The next day, August 1, 2008,
Tolbert filed a pro se notice of appeal purporting to appeal the trial court's oral denial on July 17 of his pro se motion for discharge and acquittal. That same day, August 1, a private attorney, William Peterson, signed and served an “ Entry of Appearance” on behalf of Tolbert; it was filed on August 4.6
With Peterson as his counsel, Tolbert was tried in August 2008 and again in December 2008, but both proceedings ended in mistrials brought on by the State. Tolbert was tried for a third time in November 2009, and the jury found him guilty of all charges. On November 6, 2009, the trial court entered judgments of conviction on the jury's verdicts and sentenced Tolbert to life in prison. New counsel was appointed to represent Tolbert on motion for new trial and direct appeal. In that appeal, the Court of Appeals affirmed Tolbert's convictions, holding, among other things, that while the trial court's off-the-record handling of the October 2007 speedy trial demand was “disconcerting” and “troubl[ing],” the demand had been struck, and Tolbert had then acquiesced in that ruling and waived the opportunity to file an out-of-time demand. Tolbert, 313 Ga.App. at 49–53, 720 S.E.2d 244. On September 10, 2012, this Court denied Tolbert's petition for certiorari.
On October 24, 2012, Tolbert filed a pro se petition for habeas corpus alleging, among many other things, that his convictions were void because his August 1, 2008 pro se notice of appeal had never been resolved and the trial court therefore lacked jurisdiction to try him. On July 22, 2013, the habeas court entered an order denying relief, holding that Tolbert had procedurally defaulted this jurisdictional
claim by failing to raise the issue in the trial court and on direct appeal, and that he had not shown cause and prejudice to overcome
the default. On April 22, 2014, this Court granted Tolbert's application for a certificate of probable cause to appeal, posing as an issue to be addressed only the jurisdictional claim.
2. In the habeas court and on appeal, Tolbert has asserted that he was not represented by counsel when he filed his pretrial pro se notice of appeal on August 1, 2008, and the Warden has not countered that assertion. Without addressing whether Tolbert's assertion is correct and thus whether his pro se notice of appeal was cognizable, the habeas court concluded that Tolbert had nevertheless procedurally defaulted his claim that the notice of appeal deprived the trial court of jurisdiction to try him. If the notice of appeal was effective, however, its filing would have “act[ed] as a supersedeas, depriving the trial court of the power to affect the judgment appealed.” Wetherington v. State, 295 Ga. 172, 173, 758 S.E.2d 299 (2014) (punctuation omitted). The “judgment appealed” was the oral denial of Tolbert's statutory speedy trial motion for discharge and acquittal, and reversal of that ruling by the Court of Appeals would result in Tolbert's acquittal, thereby barring any subsequent trial or conviction based on double jeopardy.7
Thus, the pretrial notice of appeal, if effective, would have deprived the trial court of jurisdiction to try Tolbert until his appeal was resolved and the trial court received and filed the remittitur from the appellate court. See Chambers v. State, 262 Ga. 200, 201–202, 415 S.E.2d 643 (1992) (holding that the State's appeal of a suppression order deprived the trial court of jurisdiction to try the accused and rendered his resulting convictions for armed robbery and other crimes void); Styles v. State, 245 Ga.App. 90, 92, 537 S.E.2d 377 (2000) (Blackburn, P.J., specially concurring) (explaining that the supersedeas resulting from an appeal in a criminal case applies to all “proceedings which either require a ruling on the matters on appeal or directly or indirectly affect such matters”). Compare Strickland v. State, 258 Ga. 764, 766, 373 S.E.2d 736 (1988) (holding that where the trial court denied a defendant's motion for discharge and acquittal on double jeopardy grounds but also made an express finding that the motion was “frivolous and dilatory,” the court retained jurisdiction to try the defendant despite his filing of a notice of appeal from the denial).
The appeal at issue here would properly have been dismissed, because the trial court's oral ruling had not been reduced to an appealable written order. See
Hill v. State, 281 Ga. 795, 799, 642 S.E.2d 64 (2007) (stating that an “oral order [is] neither final nor appealable until and unless it is reduced to writing, signed by the judge, and filed with the clerk”). That would not have meant, however, that the trial court...
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