Opinion
A24A1705
07-22-2024
JAIRUS B. MOORE v. THE STATE.
The Court of Appeals hereby passes the following order:
In 1998, Jairus B. Moore was convicted of rape and other crimes, and was sentenced to life plus 30 years to serve in confinement. We affirmed Moore's convictions and sentence on appeal. See Moore v. State, 246 Ga.App. 163 (539 S.E.2d 851) (2000). In 2007, the trial court denied Moore's motion to correct his sentence, rejecting his claim that the sentence was void, and this Court dismissed Moore's untimely application seeking a discretionary appeal from that order. Moore v. State, Case No. A08D0063 (Oct. 23, 2007). Over a decade later, Moore filed a petition for a writ of mandamus, seeking to compel the State Board of Pardons and Paroles to consider him for parole. The trial court denied that filing, and we dismissed Moore's direct appeal of the trial court's order for failure to file an application for discretionary appeal. Moore v. Bernard, Case No. A20A1239 (Feb. 11, 2020).
In April 2022, Moore filed a motion seeking to clarify his sentence regarding parole eligibility, and in May 2023, filed a "Motion to Correct Void Sentence." The trial court entered an order dismissing the motion to correct the allegedly void sentence and denying the motion to clarify. In doing so, the trial court noted that the motions were duplicative of prior motions, all of which the court had denied; that the sentence required no clarification; and that Moore's sentence was not void. Moore then filed this direct appeal. We, however, lack jurisdiction.
Moore's appeal is barred as a matter of law because the issues raised by his motions have or could have been litigated in prior appeals. See Echols v. State, 243 Ga.App. 775, 776 (534 S.E.2d 464) (2000) ("It is axiomatic that the same issue cannot be relitigated ad infinitum. The same is true of appeals of the same issue on the same grounds.") (punctuation omitted); Jackson v. State, 273 Ga. 320, 320 (540 S.E.2d 612) (2001) (a party "is not entitled to another bite at the apple by way of a second appeal"). See also Norris v. Norris, 281 Ga. 566, 567-568 (2) (642 S.E.2d 34) (2007) (the dismissal of an application for discretionary appeal acts as res judicata as to the issues raised in the application); Ross v. State, 310 Ga.App. 326, 327 (713 S.E.2d 438) (2011) (dismissal of previous appeal constitutes the binding law of the case, even though the appeals court did not reach the merits of the claim in the prior case).
Accordingly, this appeal is hereby DISMISSED.