State v. Greathouse

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
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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.

In the Supreme Court of Georgia

Decided: November 18, 2025

S25G0491. THE STATE v. GREATHOUSE.

ELLINGTON, Justice.

The State challenges the Court of Appeals’ decision vacating

the trial court’s revocation of Appellee Jody Greathouse’s probation.

See Greathouse v. State, 373 Ga. App. 769 (2024). Put simply, the

plain language of OCGA § 42-8-34.1(b) controls this case. It limits a

trial court’s authority to revoke probation without the occurrence of

at least one of two conditions. Because neither of those conditions

occurred in this case, the Court of Appeals correctly vacated the

revocation of Greathouse’s probation. 1

In November 2023, Appellee Jody Greathouse was on

probation when he was arrested following an allegation that he

violated his probation. Greathouse entered into a Consent Order of

1 We thank the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers for its

amicus brief.
Revocation (“Consent Order”) which revoked probation but allowed

the balance of his sentence to be suspended upon his successful

completion of a nine-month inpatient drug treatment program. The

Consent Order included provisions that waived Greathouse’s rights

to the filing of a written probation revocation petition, to a

revocation hearing, and to have counsel appointed for the instant

revocation. But the Consent Order also included a provision that

prospectively waived “any constitutional or statutory right to a

probation revocation hearing” that Greathouse might have for any

unknown, future alleged probation violation. 2

2 The provision specifically read:

The Defendant specifically waives any constitutional or statutory
right to a probation revocation hearing based upon any subsequent
violation of this provision. In the event that a court of competent
jurisdiction finds probable cause, upon oath, affirmation, or sworn
affidavit, that the defendant has failed to successfully complete [a
substance abuse] program, then the defendant’s ongoing
participation in such program shall be terminated immediately
and, upon arrest of the defendant for such violation by any law
enforcement officer, the defendant shall be returned to
confinement at the county jail or other facility from which the
defendant was released and the provision to serve the balance of
2022SUCR140 in the Georgia Department of Corrections of said
sentence shall be enforced.

2
On April 3, 2024, a community supervision officer submitted

an affidavit to the trial court alleging that Greathouse left the in-

patient treatment facility prior to the completion of the program,

and on the same day, the trial court issued another arrest order,

authorizing law enforcement to apprehend Greathouse and transfer

him into the custody of the Georgia Department of Corrections to

“serve the balance of his probation in … custody.” Greathouse filed

a motion to vacate the arrest order and to modify the sentence on

revocation of probation, and the court ordered “said motion [to] come

on for a hearing” and ordered its arrest order to be suspended until

the motion was heard.

On April 25, 2024, the trial court held a hearing on the

enforcement of the Consent Order, during which Greathouse’s

counsel asked that the Consent Order be vacated because

Greathouse entered into it without counsel and asked that the trial

court hear Greathouse’s argument on the merits. During the April

25 hearing, the State did not present any evidence supporting the

revocation of probation, either in the form of the sworn affidavit or

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the testimony of the officer alleging the violation. Instead, the State

explained that “if [Greathouse] wants to have a hearing and a

petition filed, then he will sit here and his parole date will be even

later than it would have been,” if the Consent Order he signed was

to be enforced. At the conclusion of the hearing, the trial court

denied the motion.

On appeal, the Court of Appeals vacated the trial court’s order.

Greathouse, 373 Ga. App at 773. Specifically, the Court of Appeals

held that the trial court was not authorized to revoke any part of

Greathouse’s probated or suspended sentence without Greathouse

admitting the violation as alleged or without a revocation hearing

according to OCGA § 42-8-34.1(b).3 See Greathouse, 373 Ga. App. at

773. The Court of Appeals explained that the statute did not provide

for a waiver of the right to a future hearing but, rather, it explicitly

prohibited a court from revoking a probated or suspended sentence

3 OCGA § 42-8-34.1(b) provides that “[a] court may not revoke any part

of any probated or suspended sentence unless the defendant admits the
violation as alleged or unless the evidence produced at the revocation hearing
establishes by a preponderance of the evidence the violation or violations
alleged.” OCGA § 42-8-34.1(b).

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“unless the due process safeguards incorporated into the statute are

satisfied.” Id.

The State sought certiorari review, arguing that many rights

in criminal proceedings may be waived, including the right to a

probation revocation hearing, and that due process does not prohibit

a probationer from opting into an alternate dispute resolution to

avoid future ramifications. At the certiorari stage, the parties

suggested that the Court of Appeals decided that due process

prohibited a waiver to a probation revocation hearing. We granted

review to consider whether a defendant may prospectively waive

constitutional or statutory rights to a probation revocation hearing

in the event of a future violation of probation.4 However, upon

further review and consideration of the Court of Appeals’s opinion,

it is now clear to us that that question is not presented by the Court

of Appeals’s opinion. The Court of Appeals did not make a ruling

regarding waiver or due process but, rather, issued a decision

4 The case was orally argued before this Court on August 26, 2025.

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explaining the statute’s limitation on a trial court’s authority to

revoke probation.5 See OCGA § 42-8-34.1(b). We now conclude that

OCGA § 42-8-34.1(b) limits the trial court’s authority to revoke a

probated or suspended sentence without first either receiving the

probationer’s admission to the violation or conducting a hearing

where the evidence establishes the violation by a preponderance of

the evidence. And a defendant’s purported waiver of any such

hearing, such as the purported waiver of a hearing included in the

Consent Order here, will not alleviate the trial court’s obligation to

hold such a hearing if the defendant has not admitted to the

violation. Accordingly, we affirm.

To begin, we recall the well-settled principles that guide our

consideration of a statute’s proper construction. “In interpreting

statutes, we presume that the General Assembly meant what it said

5 The dissenting opinion faults the majority opinion for not answering

the question this Court posed when granting certiorari. But as we have
explained, our post-grant review of the Court of Appeals’s opinion and the
record made clear that question is not actually presented in this case. Any
attempt to answer it would create the kind of advisory opinion our precedent
makes clear is improper. See Fulton County v. City of Atlanta, 299 Ga. 676, 678
(2016) (noting that advisory opinions “exceed the authority of the courts”).
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and said what it meant.” State v. Arroyo, 315 Ga. 582, 583 (2023)

(citation and quotation marks omitted). We afford the statutory text

its “plain and ordinary meaning, view it in the context in which it

appears, and read it in its most natural and reasonable way.” State

v. Cook, 317 Ga. 659, 660 (2023) (citation and quotation marks

omitted). “For context, we may look to other provisions of the same

statute, the structure and history of the whole statute, and the other

law—constitutional, statutory, and common law alike—that forms

the legal background of the statutory provision in question. Clark v.

State, 321 Ga. 35, 40 (2025). “When, as here, statutory text is clear

and unambiguous, our interpretive task begins and ends with the

text itself.” Arroyo, 315 Ga. at 584 (citation and quotation marks

omitted).

Under OCGA § 42-8-34.1(b), “[a] court may not revoke any part

of any probated or suspended sentence unless the defendant admits

the violation as alleged or unless the evidence produced at the

revocation hearing establishes by a preponderance of the evidence

the violation or violations alleged.” OCGA § 42-8-34.1(b) (emphasis

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supplied). On appeal, the State does not cite to OCGA § 42-8-34.1(b).

But, rather, the State argues that the absence of an express anti-

waiver provision in OCGA § 42-8-34.1(b) means that Greathouse

could validly waive his right to a probation revocation hearing

because, if the General Assembly had intended to prohibit a

probationer’s ability to waive his right to a hearing, it would have

included an express anti-waiver provision in the statute.

It is true that, generally, “[i]f there is no constitutional,

statutory, or public policy prohibition against waiver, an accused

may validly waive any right.” Thomas v. State, 260 Ga. 262, 263

(1990). The State, however, overlooks the express language from

subsection (b) that restricts the court’s authority to revoke probation

without the probationer first admitting the allegation or without the

court holding a hearing, irrespective of any attempt by the

probationer to waive his right to the hearing. See OCGA § 42-8-

34(b).6 The statute explicitly provides two paths that would allow a

6 Although the Court of Appeals suggested that a probationer may
bypass a hearing by admitting the violation, we do not read the Court of

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court to revoke probation. Either (1) the probationer admits the

allegation; or (2) the court conducts a hearing. See OCGA § 42-8-

34.1(b).

The dissenting opinion nonetheless contends that Greathouse

was authorized to waive the hearing here because of the background

legal rule that generally allows defendants to waive rights given to

them, so long as there is no constitutional, statutory, or public policy

prohibition against the waiver, and the dissenting opinion cites to a

number of cases that illustrate that general principle. See, e.g.,

Thomas, 260 Ga. at 263; Green v. State, 318 Ga. 610, 614 (2024);

Blackwell v. State, 299 Ga. 122, 123 (2016). But those cases are

distinguishable because the statutes or constitutional provisions

that provided the criminal defendant the right that was waived in

those cases did not involve express statutory language that

Appeals’s statement in context as concluding that a probationer may waive the
right to a future hearing under OCGA § 42-8-34.1(b). See Greathouse, 373 Ga.
App. at 773 (“The statute anticipates the possibility that the probationer might
elect to admit the violation but there is no provision for the waiver of the right
to a future hearing on future alleged violations.”). Instead, the court was
describing the contents of the statutory provision.

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restricted a court’s authority to act, as OCGA § 42-8-34.1(b) does.

And here, unlike in those cases, the express statutory language

contained in OCGA § 42-8-34.1(b) that the court “may not” act

“unless” one of the two preconditions occurred and the absence of

any language expressly permitting waiver of the two requirements

means that Greathouse could not circumvent the trial court’s

requirement to hold a hearing in the absence of Greathouse’s

admission to the violation.

The dissenting opinion contends that the trial court satisfied

OCGA § 42-8-34.1(b) when it held the hearing on April 25. But the

State has made no argument in this Court—and made no argument

in the Court of Appeals—that the April 25 hearing satisfied the trial

court’s obligations under OCGA § 42-8-34.1(b). And the record

suggests that the purpose of that hearing was to address

Greathouse’s motion to vacate the arrest order and modify the

sentence on revocation of probation—not to discuss the merits of

revoking Greathouse’s probation—as the State even implicitly

acknowledged to the trial court that the April 25 hearing did not

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constitute the hearing required by OCGA § 42-8-34.1(b) when it

argued that the filing of a petition and a subsequent hearing would

delay his parole date even further.

Because the statutory text is clear and unambiguous and there

is no contextual reason to suggest that the trial court had the

authority to revoke probation without one of the two preconditions

prescribed in § 42-8-34.1(b) having occurred first, our interpretive

task begins and ends there. See Arroyo, 315 Ga. at 584; see also

Clark, 321 Ga. at 42 (“[T]he term ‘shall’ is generally construed as

mandatory unless there is a contextual reason to think it is merely

permissive. There is no such contextual reason here; to the contrary,

the context suggests that ‘shall’ is mandatory.” (citations and

quotation marks omitted)). The trial court was bound by the statute

to hold a hearing before it could revoke any portion of Greathouse’s

probated or suspended sentence in the absence of Greathouse’s

admission to the allegations.

Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur, except LaGrua, J.,
who dissents.

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LAGRUA, Justice.

We granted certiorari in this case to decide whether a

defendant may “prospectively waive constitutional or statutory

rights to a probation revocation hearing in the event of a subsequent

violation of the terms of probation.” And, while the majority opinion

has now concluded it would be improper to decide this issue because

“that question is not presented by the Court of Appeals’ opinion,”

Maj. Op. at 6, the majority opinion nevertheless implicitly rejects

such a waiver by reading the language of OCGA § 42-8-34.1(b) to

preclude a trial court’s “authority to revoke probation without the

probationer first admitting the allegation or without the court

holding a hearing, irrespective of any attempt by the petitioner to

waive his right to the hearing.” Maj. Op. at 8. Furthermore, the

majority opinion’s conclusion that we cannot address the prospective

waiver question because the Court of Appeals “did not make a ruling

regarding waiver or due process but, rather, issued a decision

explaining the statute’s limitation on a trial court’s authority to

revoke probation,” Maj. Op. at 6, is belied by the Court of Appeals’s

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opinion and the briefing below. See Greathouse v. State, 373 Ga.

App. 769, 773 (2024).

In the State’s briefing before the Court of Appeals, the State

explicitly argued that, under federal and Georgia law, a probationer

can waive his rights to a probation revocation hearing and “freely

and intelligently opt[] into an alternative dispute process to address

future nonfeasance” by prospectively waiving those rights. The

State further claimed that, in this case, the record demonstrated

that Greathouse had voluntarily and knowingly waived his rights to

a probation revocation hearing for future probation violations when

he entered into an agreement and consent order with the State that

expressly memorialized his understanding of those rights and his

voluntariness in agreeing to waive them. In vacating the trial court’s

order, the Court of Appeals necessarily rejected the State’s

prospective waiver argument, concluding that, “[w]hile there is little

doubt that a criminal defendant … can waive most rights, due

process demands that the petitioner be afforded the opportunity to

deny or explain the circumstances surrounding an alleged probation

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violation.” Greathouse, 373 Ga. App. at 773.

Accordingly, I believe the certiorari question has been

adequately presented in this case, and I also believe—as the

majority opinion points out in criticizing the dissent—that, had we

meaningfully tackled this question, I likely would have concluded

that a probationer’s “right to a future probation revocation hearing

on future alleged violations” is yet another right a defendant is

permitted to waive under our case law. Greathouse, 373 Ga. App. at

773. See also e.g., Green v. State, 318 Ga. 610, 614 (2024)

(constitutional and statutory rights may be waived in the guilty plea

context if the waiver is both voluntary and intelligent); State v.

Houston, 312 Ga. 853, 857 (2021) (allowing a voluntary and

intelligent waiver of a criminal defendant’s Sixth Amendment right

to counsel); Rawles v. Holt, 304 Ga. 774, 777 (2018) (allowing a

voluntary and intelligent waiver of a criminal defendant’s right to

file a habeas corpus petition); Blackwell v. State, 299 Ga. 122, 123

(2016) (allowing the knowing and intelligent waiver of a criminal

defendant’s right to withdraw his guilty plea any time prior to

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sentencing); Rush v. State, 276 Ga. 541, 541 (2003) (“[T]his Court

has held that a criminal defendant may waive his statutory right to

appeal a conviction in exchange for the State’s agreement not to seek

the death penalty at sentencing, so long as the waiver is voluntary,

knowing, and intelligent.”); Thomas v. State, 260 Ga. 262, 263 (1990)

(“If there is no constitutional, statutory, or public policy prohibition

against waiver, an accused may validly waive any right.”).

Moreover, it is worth noting that, here, Greathouse was not

denied the opportunity to be heard as he alleges or as the Court of

Appeals concluded. Greathouse, 373 Ga. App. at 773 (“Greathouse

had no opportunity to contest the validity of the sworn allegations

or explain the circumstances surrounding his failure to successfully

complete the inpatient treatment program.”). The record reflects

that, after pleading guilty to one count of possessing less than two

grams of methamphetamine and one count of possessing a drug-

related object in October 2022, Greathouse was sentenced as a first

offender to three years’ probation with certain special conditions,

including the obligation to pay a fine, to “undergo a substance abuse

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evaluation as directed by the probation office,” and to “successfully

complete any course of treatment recommended by the probation

office at [Greathouse’s] own expense.” Between March 2023 and

November 2023, Greathouse violated the terms of his first offender

probation sentence multiple times by failing to complete a drug

evaluation, failing to attend classes, and failing to complete drug

treatment, among other violations, and thereafter, consent orders

revoking his probation were entered by the trial court on May 8,

2023, August 14, 2023, and December 4, 2023. In these consent

orders, Greathouse admitted to his probation violations and was

given a chance to have his probation reinstated and to come into

compliance and address his apparent drug addiction outside of

incarceration. And, despite Greathouse’s multiple probation

violations in 2023, his first offender status was never revoked.

In each consent order, Greathouse agreed to waive his right to

have a written petition filed with the trial court for revocation of his

probation, his right to an attorney in the probation revocation case,

and his right to a probation revocation hearing, acknowledging that

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“no one has coerced or threatened me to obtain this waiver, and I

waive these rights freely and voluntarily.” And, in the last of the

consent orders with the State entered on December 4, 2023—this

one agreeing to suspend Greathouse’s sentence upon his successful

completion of a nine-month inpatient treatment program—

Greathouse also agreed that he would waive “any constitutional or

statutory right to a probation revocation hearing based upon any

subsequent violation.” This waiver also expressly contemplated

that, in the event the trial court found “probable cause” based “upon

oath, affirmation, or sworn affidavit”—i.e., evidence—that

Greathouse had failed to complete the substance abuse program,

Greathouse’s participation in the treatment program would be

“terminated immediately,” and he would be arrested and “returned

to confinement at the county jail or other facility.”

When Greathouse again violated the terms of his probation by

leaving the treatment facility before completing the program, a

community supervision officer submitted a sworn affidavit to the

trial court, resulting in the issuance of an order on April 3, 2024 for

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Greathouse’s arrest and transfer to the Department of Corrections.

As the majority opinion notes, Greathouse’s attorney then filed a

motion to vacate the arrest order and to modify his sentence on the

revocation of probation on April 18, 2024. In that motion,

Greathouse requested the opportunity to be heard to “contest or

explain the allegations against him”—presumably to explain why he

left the treatment facility before completing the program as required

by the terms of his agreed-upon sentence. The very same day—April

18, 2024—the trial court issued an order granting Greathouse’s

request to suspend the order directing that Greathouse be

transferred into the custody of the Department of Corrections and

scheduling a “show cause” hearing for April 25, 2024 on

Greathouse’s motion to modify his sentence of probation. At that

April 25 hearing, Greathouse appeared via “Webex,” and

Greathouse’s trial counsel appeared in person. During the hearing,

trial counsel asserted that “this can primarily be handled just with

argument,” and he presented no evidence to support Greathouse’s

motion or his reasons for leaving the facility and failing to comply

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with the terms of his probation. The State’s evidence was already in

the record, having been presented on April 3, 2024 in the form of the

community supervision officer’s sworn affidavit. At the conclusion of

the hearing, the trial court ruled that “without any proof,” it could

not grant Greathouse’s motion to modify his sentence of probation.

Thus, contrary to the Court of Appeals’s conclusion that

Greathouse did not have an opportunity “to contest the validity of

the sworn allegations or explain the circumstances surrounding his

failure to complete the inpatient treatment program,” Greathouse,

373 Ga. App. at 773, Greathouse was “afforded the opportunity to

deny or explain the circumstances surrounding [his] alleged

probation violation,” id., but he failed to present any evidence in

support of his motion to modify his sentence of probation or his

reasons for leaving the treatment facility. And now, at the hearing

the majority says must occur, the trial court can revoke

Greathouse’s first offender status, which has not yet been done, and

impose the maximum sentence for his two offenses. See OCGA § 42-

8-16(d). See also OCGA §§ 16-13-30(c)(2) and 16-13-32.2(b).

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Because the trial court held a hearing that afforded

Greathouse an opportunity to address his probation violations,

arguably satisfying the provisions of OCGA § 42-8-34.1(b); because

I believe Greathouse could have knowingly and intelligently waived

his right to a probation revocation hearing under our law; and

because I think we should address the important question regarding

the permissibility of a waiver in these circumstances, I must

respectfully dissent.

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