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187 Ga. 162

Lunsford v. State

Supreme Court of Georgia

Decided November 22, 1938

Supreme Court of Georgia · decided 1938-11-22

Relies on Hodges v. Seaboard Savings & Loan Ass'n · Mays v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1938-11-22

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently June 1958

5 state decisions

20193819401950decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Grice, Justice.

¶1A question of constitutional law, not raised in the trial of an accusation in the criminal court of Fulton Count}', but first made in a petition for certiorari to the superior court after verdict -in the trial court, is not properly presented for decision. Mays v. State, 175 Ga. 260 (165 S. E. 68).

¶2Under the amendment of art. 6, sec. 2, par. 5, of the constitution (Code, § 2-3005), defining the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals, which places jurisdiction in the Supreme Court of “all cases that involve the construction of the constitution of the State of Georgia or of the United States,” the words “construction of the constitution,” etc., as there used, contemplate construction where the meaning of some provision of the constitution is directly in question and is doubtful by force of its, own terms or under the decisions of the Supreme Court of Georgia or of the United States, and not the mere application of unquestioned and unambiguous provisions of the constitution to a given state of facts. Hodges v. Seaboard Loan & Savings Asso., 186 Ga. 845 (199 S. E. 105).

¶3The provisions of the constitution just referred to do not confer upon the Supreme Court jurisdiction in cases involving misdemeanor offenses, unmixed with equitable or constitutional questions.

¶4By the constitutional amendment which defines the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals (art. 6, sec. 2, par. 9, as amended; *164Code, § 2-3009), the Court of Appeals is given jurisdiction as an appellate court in all cases in which jurisdiction has not been conferred by the constitution upon the Supreme Court.

¶5In view of the foregoing statutes and rulings, and under the facts of this case, the Court of Appeals, and not the Supreme Court, has jurisdiction of this case.

¶6Transferred to the Court of Appeals.

All the Justices concur, except Bussell, C. J., absent because of illness, and
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