Pounds v. State

309 Ga. 376

FINAL COPY S20A0470. POUNDS v. THE STATE. WARREN, Justice. In 2017, William C. Pounds III was convicted of malice murder. Pounds filed a motion for new trial, but did so after the statutory filing deadline for motions for new trial had expired; the motion was therefore untimely. However, the trial court did not dismiss Pounds’s motion for new trial as untimely; instead, it denied the motion on the merits. Then, three weeks later, and almost two years after Pounds was convicted, the trial court granted Pounds an out- of-time appeal. But because the trial court’s merits ruling on…