Nearly a year after a jury convicted Patricia Reid and Anthony Vincent Pope of various felonies, the trial court reversed the judgment of conviction and granted them new trials purportedly based upon the court’s doubts as to the credibility of a State witness. The State argues on appeal that the trial court erred in granting the new trials. Under the unique circumstances presented in this case, we agree.
The pertinent case history is as follows. In July 2013, Reid, Pope, and co-defendant Crawford Lewis were indicted in the DeKalb County Superior Court for violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and
The trial court entered judgment on the verdict and held a sentencing hearing in December 2013, at which Reid was sentenced to twenty years, with fifteen years to be served in confinement, and Pope was sentenced to twenty years, with eight years to be served in confinement. Although the State maintained that Lewis satisfied his obligation to testify truthfully and requеsted that he be sentenced in accordance with the plea agreement, the trial court refused to do so. Without challenging the truthfulness of Lewis’s testimony, the trial judge — admittedly incensed by what she cоnsidered to be the “abhorrent” criminal conduct of all involved — emphasized that Lewis was “a public official, this was on his watch, he stood by. And then he hindered and interfered with and tried to stop the comрletion of a rightful, lawful investigation.” Consequently, she refused to impose upon Lewis a sentence “disproportionate” to that of his co-conspirators and instead sentenced him to 12 months in cоnfinement.
Reid and Pope thereafter filed timely motions for new trials, but Pope later withdrew his motion and filed a notice of appeal. Meanwhile, in the obstruction case, Lewis filed a motion for an immediate hearing for reconsideration of his sentence. After conducting a hearing on the motion, the trial judge declined to reconsider the sentence, changed her rationale fоr refusing to consummate the previously agreed-upon plea deal, and stated for the first time that her rejection of Lewis’s plea and the resultant sentence were based upon “the credibility, the believability, the probability or the improbability of [Lewis’s] testimony[.]”
Lewis, now aligned with the State, appealed his case to this Court. See Lewis v. State,
On October 27, 2014, three days after our opinion in Lewis was rendered hut before the remittitur was sent, the trial judge issued the instant order in which she identified those parts of Lewis’s testimony that she considered lacking in credibility, deemed the testimony material, and held that she “[could not] presume that [the testimony] did not impact the jury’s verdict as to [Reid and Pope].” She thereafter granted Reid’s motion for new trial and sua sponte granted Pope a new trial “in the interеsts of justice.”
The State appeals, arguing that the trial court erred in reversing Reid and Pope’s judgment of conviction.
Georgia law authorizes the trial court to independently assess a witness’s crеdibility and grant a new trial if the court determines that the verdict of the jury “is .. . contrary to evidence and the principles of justice and equity,” OCGA § 5-5-20, or if it is “decidedly and strongly against the weight of the evidence.” OCGA § 5-5-21. “When рroperly raised in a timely motion, these grounds for a new trial — commonly known as the general grounds — require the trial judge to exercise a broad discretion to sit as a thirteenth juror.” (Citation and punctuation omitted.) White v. State,
Furthermore, if a trial court grants а new trial on its own motion, it must do so within 30 days from entry of the underlying judgment. See OCGA § 5-5-40 (h) (“The court... shall be empowered to grant a new trial on its own motion within 30 days from entry of the judgment....”). Moreover, outside of that statutorily definеd 30-day window, a trial court considering a timely motion for new trial is confined to the grounds raised in the motion itself. See State v. Jones,
As set forth below, when considered within this statutory framework, we have no trouble concluding that the trial court erred in reversing Reid and Pope’s judgment of conviction.
1. The question as to whether Reid sufficiently raised the general grounds in her motion for new trial so as to invoke the trial court’s discretiоn to act as the thirteenth juror is a close one.
Nevertheless, although the trial court exercised its discretion as the thirteenth juror to assess the credibility of at least one witness, it otherwise failed to properly fulfill its affirmative statutory duty to independently weigh the trial evidence as required by OCGA §§ 5-5-20
2. As to Pope, the trial court lаcked the authority to reverse his judgment of conviction. The record is undisputed that Pope did not have a motion for new trial pending at the time the trial court entered its order, which occurred nеarly a year after the entry of judgment. Because the trial court’s sua sponte grant of a new trial fell outside of the 30-day window prescribed by the statute, it was erroneous as a matter of law. See OCGA § 5-5-40 (h). See also Jones, supra at 303 (1).
For these reasons, the trial court’s order is vacated as to Reid and reversed as to Pope, and this case is remanded to the trial court for consideration of Reid’s motiоn for new trial.
Judgment reversed in part and vacated in part, and case remanded.
Notes
Pope withdrew his notice of appeal that was pending in this Court a few hours before the trial court issued the оrder.
The State’s brief focuses primarily on the trial court’s failure to conduct proceedings in the Lewis case and make findings of fact in accordance with our opinion in Lewis. Por the reasons also noted in the State’s brief and fully explained herein, however, the trial court erred for reasons completely independent of the Lewis case.
The special grounds raised in Reid’s motion for new trial generаlly go to the sufficiency of the evidence and/or actions of the trial court that she contends were errors of law or constitutional violations. She did, however, vaguely assert that “[t]he evidence confused the jury and provided no clarity to reach a unanimous verdict,” and that “the jury’s verdict is contrary to the law and facts.”