THE STATE v. COOK

In the
Supreme Court of Georgia
No. S26A0898
The State
v.
Billy Joe Cook
On Appeal from the Superior Court of Gwinnett County
No. 18B040717
Decided: October 14, 2026
PINSON, Justice.
Billy Joe Cook was indicted on two counts of malice murder
and felony murder in connection with the death of Leslie Adams,
his “on-again/off-again” girlfriend. The crimes happened on Octo-
ber 21, 2005. Adams’s body was not found until May 2007, when
two people in Franklin County found parts of her body “in a
swampy area not far from the interstate.” The Gwinnett County
cold case unit took up the investigation, which discovered “[cell]
phone records … that put [Cook] in th[e] vicinity of where [Ad-
ams] was when she went missing.” Cook was indicted in Septem-
ber 2018, roughly 13 years after the alleged events. 1 After two
1 The indictment charged Cook with two counts of mal-
ice murder (Counts 1 and 2), felony murder predicated on
aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (Count 3), and fel-
ony murder predicated on aggravated stalking (Count 4).
Count 1 alleged malice murder based on the shooting of Ad-
ams while Count 2 alleged malice murder by causing Ad-
ams’s death “in a manner unknown.”
NOTICE: This opinion is subject to modification resulting from motions for reconsideration under Supreme Court
Rule 27, the Court’s reconsideration, and editorial revisions by the Reporter of Decisions. The version of the
opinion published in the Advance Sheets for the Georgia Reports, designated as the “Final Copy,” will replace any
prior version on the Court’s website and docket. A bound volume of the Georgia Reports will contain the final and
official text of the opinion.

2
pretrial hearings, the trial court issued two orders: One order
granted Cook’s general demurrer and struck Count 4 of the in-
dictment. The other found, among other things, that the State had
not met the requirements for authenticating certain cell phone
records under OCGA § 24-9-902(11) (Rule 902(11)). The State
timely appealed both orders under OCGA §§ 5-7-1 and 5-7-2. 2 As
to the first order, we conclude that the trial court erred in grant-
ing the demurrer because the count in question tracked the lan-
guage of OCGA § 16-5-1(c) and alleged the essential elements of
felony murder. As for the second order, we conclude that the State
has not shown that it has statutory authorization to appeal it as
an order “excluding ... evidence” under OCGA § 5-7-1(a)(5). So the
trial court’s order granting the general demurrer is reversed, and
the State’s appeal of the Rule 902(11) order is dismissed.
1. The State appeals the trial court’s order granting Cook’s
general demurrer to Count 4 of the indictment, which charged
him with felony murder predicated on aggravated stalking. 3 In its
order, the trial court concluded that “[t]he State did not establish
any causal connection between the felony aggravated stalking
and the death.” To survive a general demurrer, the challenged
indictment need only “recite the language of the statute that sets
out all the elements of the offense charged” or “allege the facts
necessary to establish a violation of a criminal statute.” Moss v.
State, 322 Ga. 757, 765 (2025) (quotation marks omitted). See also
Budhani v. State, 306 Ga. 315, 319 (2019). A trial court’s ruling
2 This case was docketed to our April 2026 term and is
submitted for a decision on the briefs.
3 The State appeals under OCGA § 5-7-1(a)(1), which
authorizes the State to appeal “[f]rom an order … dismissing
any indictment … or any count thereof.”

3
on a general demurrer is reviewed de novo. State v. Phillips, 323
Ga. 125, 128 (2025).
Count 4 of the indictment survives Cook’s general demur-
rer. That count charges Cook with felony murder, which a person
commits when, in the commission of a felony, he causes the death
of another human being. See OCGA § 16-5-1(c). Count 4 alleges
that Cook “caused the death” of Adams “while in the commission
of a felony, Aggravated Stalking (OCGA sec 16-5-91), by having
non-consensual, in person contact with” Adams “for the purpose
of harassing and intimidating her,” which violated an existing
Temporary Protective Order and “resulted in [ ] Adams being
killed by [Cook] in a manner unknown to the Grand Jury.” These
allegations track the language of OCGA § 16-5-1(c) and allege the
essential elements of felony murder, including that the defendant
caused the death of another person. That is enough to survive a
general demurrer. See, e.g., State v. Wyatt, 295 Ga. 257, 260
(2014); Clark v. State, 315 Ga. 423, 443 (2023); Stinson v. State,
279 Ga. 177, 179 (2005); Lowe v. State, 276 Ga. 538, 539 (2003);
Wallace v. State, 320 Ga. 272, 286 (2024). Thus, the trial court
erred in granting Cook’s general demurrer to Count 4.
2. The State also appeals the trial court’s order of Septem-
ber 15, 2025, which, among other things, found that “the require-
ments for authentication under [R]ule 902(11) have not been met
as to the cell phone records that the State seeks to introduce at
trial.” For authorization to appeal this order, the State relies on
OCGA § 5-7-1(a)(5), which provides that “[a]n appeal may be
taken by” the State in criminal cases “[f]rom an order, decision,
or judgment excluding any other evidence to be used by the state

4
at trial” if certain timing and certification requirements are met.4
In interpreting subsection (a)(5), we have made clear that an or-
der “exclud[es] ... evidence” whether it does so expressly or “by
operation of law.” State v. Islam, 321 Ga. 30, 32, 34 (2025). That
is, if preventing the evidence in question from being admitted at
trial is the “necessary consequence” of an order, that order is an
order “excluding ... evidence,” whether or not it uses those words.
See id. at 34. See also OCGA § 5-7-6 (“This chapter shall be liber-
ally construed to effectuate the purposes stated in this chapter.”);
United States v. Drogoul, 1 F3d 1546, 1551 n.13 (11th Cir. 1993)
(construing a materially similar federal statute authorizing the
United States to appeal from a decision or order of a district court
“suppressing or excluding evidence” to permit an appeal when an
order “ha[s] the practical effect of excluding evidence at trial”).
Applying that standard here, the State has not shown that
the order in question is an order “excluding ... evidence” that it
has authorization to appeal under OCGA § 5-7-1(a)(5). See State
v. Wheeler, 310 Ga. 72, 76, 81 (2020) (dismissing the State’s ap-
peal for failing “[t]o properly invoke this Court’s jurisdiction” by
complying with the requirements of OCGA § 5-7-1(a)(5) authoriz-
ing interlocutory review, which are jurisdictional). A pretrial or-
der finding that the State’s notice did not meet the requirements
of Rule 902(11) does not, taken in isolation, exclude any evidence.
Authentication is a “condition precedent” to admitting evidence,
4 The statute says “any other evidence,” OCGA § 5-7-
1(a)(5) 	(emphasis 	added), 	because 	the 	prior 	subsection,
OCGA § 5-7-1(a)(4), allows an appeal “[f]rom an order, deci-
sion, or judgment suppressing or excluding” a subset of evi-
dence: evidence “illegally seized or excluding the results of
any test for alcohol or drugs.”

5
OCGA § 24-9-901(a), and Rule 902 is a shortcut to authentication
in some cases: it excuses a party that seeks to introduce evidence
from the additional work of presenting extrinsic evidence to prove
that the evidence is what the party claims it is. See OCGA § 24-
9-902. So failing to meet the requirements for authenticating ev-
idence under Rule 902 just means that the party must instead put
forth “evidence sufficient to support a finding that the matter in
question is what its proponent claims” (often, testimony from a
person with knowledge of the evidence in question) before that
evidence may be admitted at trial. OCGA § 24-9-901. And here,
the State has given no indication — nor do we see any such indi-
cation in the record — that, as a result of the trial court’s order,
the State will not be able to authenticate the records at trial. So
the record supplies no basis for concluding that, as a “necessary
consequence” of the trial court’s order, the cell phone records here
have been excluded from the evidence at trial. See Islam, 321 Ga.
at 32, 34. To the contrary, at the pretrial hearing addressing this
issue, the trial court explained that an earlier order denying
Cook’s motion to suppress went to “the admissibility of [the cell
phone] evidence,” whereas its ruling on Cook’s objection to the
State’s Rule 902(11) notice was only that “the way it has been
submitted by the State doesn’t meet the foundation, so it doesn’t
come in that way,” “[b]ut it doesn’t mean that the State can’t get
it in other ways.” See State v. Sims, 322 Ga. 769, 775 (2025) (ex-
plaining that, to the extent they are consistent, “a trial court’s
oral pronouncements ‘may provide insight on the intent of a later
written judgment’” (quoting Williams v. Williams, 295 Ga. 113,
114 (2014)). 5 Thus, the State has not shown that OCGA § 5-7-
5 During the pretrial hearing, the trial court also men-
tioned OCGA § 24-8-803(6) (Rule 803(6)), but the court did

6
1(a)(5) gives it authorization to appeal that order. 6
Appeal dismissed in part and judgment reversed in part.
All the Justices concur.
not address that rule in its written order. A trial court’s com-
ments made in an earlier hearing cannot modify an order
later reduced to writing. See, e.g., Sims, 322 Ga. at 775
(“[A]ny discrepancy between the written judgment and oral
pronouncement is resolved in favor of the written judg-
ment.”). So the State remains free at trial to seek to authen-
ticate the cell phone records in whatever way it is able, and
to seek their admission under Rule 803(6) (or any other rule
that may apply).
6 This conclusion is, of course, based on our under-
standing of the limited import of the written order address-
ing Rule 902(11). If the trial court meant to preclude the
State from introducing the phone records at trial, it should
make that clear in a written order, which the State could
then seek to appeal before trial.