Tosha Mayuiorette Williams was indicted for malice murder, felony murder, and aggravated assault by running over her fiance with an SUV. A jury acquitted her of malice murder and the lesser included offense of involuntary manslaughter, but found her guilty of felony murder, the lesser included offense of voluntary manslaughter, and aggravated assault. The trial court granted her motion for new trial on grounds of a Batson violation. As the State prepared for a retrial of the felony murder and aggravated assault charges, Williams filed a “Motion in Autrefois Convict and Plea of Former Jeopardy.” The parties agree that this motion was denied, although no ruling appears in the record or transcript. When the case was called for trial, Williams entered a guilty plea to the charge of aggravated assault. The felony murder count was dead docketed. Williams appeals from the trial court’s judgment and sentence as well as from the denial of her plea of double jeopardy. In four related enumerations of error, she contends that the trial court erred by denying her plea of double jeopardy to the felony murder and aggravated assault charges.1 According to Williams, the trial court’s denial of her plea in bar forced her to choose between pleading guilty or trial. We disagree and affirm.
1. It is black-letter law that a defendant may not successfully move for a new trial and then plead double jeopardy: The rule applicable to this case is as follows: Where the verdict is not absolutely void and the defendant moves for and is granted a new trial, a plea of former jeopardy will not lie. A defendant waives the right to plead former jeopardy when he secures a new trial through his own efforts. . . . Reversal for trial error, as distinguished from evidentiary insufficiency, does not constitute a decision to the effect that the government has failed to prove its case. As such, it implies nothing with respect to the guilt or innocence of the defendant. Rather, it is a determination that a defendant has been convicted through a judicial process which is defective in some way. And, when the judicial process is defective in some fundamental respect such as incorrect jury instructions, the accused has a strong interest in obtaining a fair readjudication of his guilt free from error, just as society maintains a valid concern for insuring that the guilty are punished. Citations, punctuation, and footnotes omitted. State v. Heggs , 252 Ga. App. 865, 867 558 SE2d 41 2001. Based upon this well-established law, we conclude that Williams’s double jeopardy claim has no merit.
