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Fewer murder appeals, bigger civil questions? The civil side of Coleman

8/18/26

By: Juliana Sleeper

Sometimes the most consequential part of an appellate decision is not what the court decides about the case before it. It is what the court tells us about the cases still coming. That is what makes Coleman v. State worth reading even if you never handle a criminal appeal.

On August 13, 2026, the Supreme Court affirmed Michael Coleman’s murder convictions and sentences. But in a concurrence joined by Presiding Justice Warren and Justices Bethel, Ellington, McMillian, Colvin, Pinson, and Land, Chief Justice Peterson announced a significant change in Georgia appellate practice. Beginning with cases docketed on or after July 1, 2027, the Supreme Court will no longer decide direct appeals in non-death-penalty murder cases that do not otherwise fall within its direct appellate jurisdiction. Those appeals will go first to the Court of Appeals.

Justice LaGrua wrote separately, arguing that the Supreme Court should continue reviewing all murder appeals because of their gravity and raising practical concerns about transferring substantial work to an already busy Court of Appeals. Which raises a different question for civil lawyers: What happens to civil appellate practice when that much room opens at the Georgia Supreme Court?

Because this is not a small amount of room. Chief Justice Peterson explains that the Court has averaged approximately 45 non-death-penalty murder opinions per term in recent years—the category of cases principally affected by the coming change. With three terms each year, that represents a substantial share of the Court’s merits work. The broader numbers give some sense of the place murder cases have occupied on the Court’s published docket: from 2022 through 2024, all murder cases accounted for between 55 and 59 percent of its published opinions, or 379 of 667 opinions. Not all of those cases will move, of course. But Justice LaGrua notes that direct death-penalty appeals—the principal category that will remain—have averaged fewer than two per year over the past fifteen years. The point is less about an exact percentage of the docket disappearing than about the scale of judicial attention that will become available for other work.

That does not mean the Supreme Court will have an empty docket. Far from it. The Court has constitutional and administrative responsibilities only it can perform. Certiorari petitions have increased, election litigation has become more demanding, and the Court regulates the practice of law and oversees judicial discipline and the judicial system more broadly.

Nor do the murder cases disappear. The non-death penalty cases falling outside the Court’s direct jurisdiction will go to the Court of Appeals, and some will return through certiorari. But when cases that once required merits decisions by nine justices no longer automatically require them, there is more room to choose—and for civil appellate lawyers, what the Court says it may do with that room is particularly interesting.

Chief Justice Peterson explains that removing non-death-penalty murder cases would give the Supreme Court “increased capacity to focus on legal questions with a broader application” rather than devoting so much attention to fact-bound murder appeals. That sentence should catch the attention of anyone with a civil case presenting a question Georgia law has not answered.

Not because Coleman promises more civil certiorari grants. It does not. Not because close civil cases suddenly have a better chance of reaching the Supreme Court. They probably do not. But there may be more capacity for the kind of case the Court is particularly well suited to decide: a clean case presenting an important question of Georgia law whose answer matters beyond the parties before it.

Government-law appeals offer obvious examples. Sovereign, official, and governmental immunity continue to produce difficult questions about where liability begins and ends. Document-production disputes can implicate the obligations of public bodies statewide. Questions involving the authority of counties, municipalities, agencies, boards, and public officers may begin as intensely local disputes and end with rules that apply throughout Georgia.

The Chief Justice also identifies significant and emergency election litigation as an increasingly demanding responsibility. Those are exactly the sorts of civil cases in which the question may be narrow while the implications are broad. And perhaps that distinction—a narrow question with broad implications—is the most useful thing civil appellate lawyers can take from Coleman.

A petition asking the Supreme Court to correct everything that went wrong below is one thing. A petition saying that one unresolved question of Georgia law is cleanly presented, properly preserved, and important to courts, governments, businesses, lawyers, or citizens across Georgia is something quite different. The concurrence reinforces the point: automatic review of every murder appeal, Chief Justice Peterson explains, limits the Court’s ability to focus on well-presented cases that squarely raise important legal questions.

A discretionary docket allows a high court to wait for a better vehicle. Civil appellate lawyers know what that means. Preservation matters. The record matters. Procedural posture matters. And framing matters too.

What exactly is the question? Can it be narrowed into one of first impression? Can it be framed as important statewide? Does answering it require the Court to resolve four preliminary disputes first? Is this really error correction dressed as statewide significance, or is there a recurring legal question for which no controlling answer exists?

The temptation in an important appeal is often to make the case bigger. Coleman may be a reason to make the question smaller. Smaller and cleaner: one issue of first impression, one conflict needing resolution, one statutory phrase courts are applying differently, one immunity question affecting governmental entities across Georgia, one rule about public documents that will govern requests far beyond the parties before the Court. The narrower the doorway, sometimes, the more important what lies behind it.

There is, of course, another side. The work leaving the Supreme Court is going to the Court of Appeals, where most Georgia civil appeals already live. Justice LaGrua notes that the Court of Appeals has already absorbed substantial additional jurisdiction. In 2016, the General Assembly transferred five categories of cases formerly heard by the Supreme Court, including title-to-land cases, most equity and extraordinary-remedy cases, wills cases, and divorce and alimony cases.

She questions how easily the Court of Appeals—its judges, staff attorneys, support staff, and Clerk’s Office—can absorb another substantial category of appeals, while making clear that she does not doubt its ability to handle their complexity or seriousness. Practitioners should also watch whether the added workload prompts requests for additional judges, staff, or other resources—including the funding necessary to support them. Chief Justice Peterson views the same landscape differently: because the Court of Appeals decides cases in three-judge panels rather than requiring nine justices to participate, he concludes that it is structurally better suited to handle the volume.

Both points matter. The Supreme Court may have greater capacity for selected questions of statewide significance just as the Court of Appeals takes on a substantial new category of criminal appeals. One court may become more selective while the other becomes even more central to the everyday development of Georgia law.

The law itself may look a little different too. For decades, civil lawyers have found useful rules in criminal cases. Evidence principles do not become irrelevant because they were announced in a murder prosecution. Neither do rules governing preservation, standards of review, statutory construction, constitutional procedure, or the relationship between trial and appellate courts.

Chief Justice Peterson sees the volume of murder opinions as part of the problem: every published Supreme Court opinion creates binding precedent, even when the case presents mostly routine or fact-specific questions. After the transition, we may see fewer Supreme Court opinions establishing generally applicable rules simply because an issue arose in a murder appeal, and more attention devoted to issues the Court deliberately selects because they warrant a statewide answer.

That could matter for civil law, but there is good reason not to get ahead of ourselves. Justice LaGrua points to what happened after divorce and alimony cases moved to the Court of Appeals. Since that jurisdictional shift, she notes, the Supreme Court has not granted certiorari in a divorce or alimony case, although it has decided a handful of certiorari cases involving related domestic-relations issues.

That is an important reminder of what certiorari is—and what it is not. The Supreme Court is not promising another appeal. The change simply creates the possibility of more room for questions that justify the attention of the state’s highest court.

There are first-impression civil questions working their way through Georgia courts now: questions involving immunity, government authority, document production, elections, statutes, businesses, insurance, torts, and procedure. Some will matter only to the people in the caption. Some will not. Some small case, somewhere, will contain a question whose answer governs a hundred cases after it.

The opportunity after Coleman may not be to ask the Supreme Court to hear more. It may be to give the Court less: one carefully preserved question, narrowly drawn, arising from a clean record, with consequences extending well beyond the parties. There is going to be more room. The interesting question is what Georgia’s lawyers will put in it.

For more information, please contact Juliana Sleeper at juliana.sleeper@fmglaw.com or your local FMG attorney.

Information conveyed herein should not be construed as legal advice or represent any specific or binding policy or procedure of any organization. Information provided is for educational purposes only. These materials are written in a general format and not intended to be advice applicable to any specific circumstance. Legal opinions may vary when based on subtle factual distinctions. All rights reserved. No part of this presentation may be reproduced, published or posted without the written permission of Freeman Mathis & Gary, LLP.