The Georgia Court of Appeals reversed a trial judge and its own precedent in ruling that a man who struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors for trafficking methamphetamine is not immune from prosecution on the same charges in state court.

Friday's opinion, written by Judge Brian Rickman with the concurrence of Judges Stephen Dillard and E. Trenton Brown III, overruled a "rather inartfully worded" decision from 1988 that a dismissal of a criminal charge as a result of a plea agreement amounted to an "acquittal" under Georgia's statute barring successive prosecutions for the same offense under state and federal law.

The case involves the 2017 arrest and indictment of Samuel Adams on several charges, including trafficking in methamphetamine.

Adams pleaded not guilty and was placed on the trial calendar, but in the meantime he was indicted by federal prosecutors in Georgia's Middle District for charges including possession of meth with intent to distribute and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Federal prosecutors agreed to drop the meth charges in return for a guilty plea to the firearm count, and "the plea was given 'in full satisfaction of all possible federal criminal charges, known to the United States Attorney at the time of [Adams's] guilty plea,'" according to the opinion.

Adams then filed a plea seeking dismissal of the state charges based on a Georgia's statute decreeing that a "prosecution is barred if the accused was formerly prosecuted for the same crime based upon the same material facts" and "resulted in either a conviction or an acquittal."

Judge Lawton Stephens granted the motion, "concluding that the federal prosecutor's dismissal of the drug charge in accordance with a plea agreement 'acts as an acquittal and bars further prosecution'" under the statute, the opinion said.

In reversing Stephens, Rickman noted that both the United States and Georgia constitutions prohibit anyone being "put in jeopardy" twice for the same offense.

"States are sovereigns separate from the federal government, however, 'and a state's power to undertake criminal prosecutions is derived from its own inherent sovereignty,'" Rickman wrote, citing the Georgia Supreme Court's 2018 decision in Calloway v. State.

"No one disputes in this case that the state was not constitutionally barred under the dual sovereignty doctrine from prosecuting Adams for trafficking methamphetamine merely because the federal government elected not to do so in accordance with the terms of a plea agreement," the opinion said.

Nonetheless, said Rickman, the Georgia statute does bar successive federal and state prosecutions "'for a crime which is within the concurrent jurisdiction of this state if such former prosecution resulted in either a conviction or an acquittal and the subsequent prosecution is for the same conduct, unless each prosecution requires proof of a fact not required in the other prosecution or unless the crime was not consummated when the former trial began.'"

The only issue in this case, said Rickman, is whether the dismissal of the federal drug charge constituted an "acquittal."

Stephens had relied on the court's 1988 ruling in State v. Smith, in which a drunk-driving defendant facing four counts pleaded guilty to two in exchange for dropping the others.

After the court accepted the plea, the solicitor said his assistant had made a mistake and attempted to prosecute one of the dismissed charges.

The 1988 opinion said the trial transcript "unequivocally reflects that appellee/defendant entered a plea of guilty to two counts, as above discussed, and that this plea was duly accepted."

The trial judge in that case was correct to consider the other counts barred by double jeopardy, the 1988 court ruled.

In Friday's opinion, Rickman said that decision and similar cases "unnecessarily conflate the constitutional protection of double jeopardy with the statutory protections against successive prosecution offered by OCGA 16-1-8."

"Specifically," he wrote, "Smith predicated the application of OCGA 16-1-8 (b) on a defendant having first been 'placed in jeopardy,' relying on case law that injected jeopardy into the definition of prosecuted' for the purposes of the statute."

But nothing in the statute "predicates the application of its provisions on the attachment of jeopardy," Rickman wrote. "Rather, pertinent to our holding, the bar is established if an accused was formerly prosecuted' and … the prosecution resulted in 'either a conviction or an acquittal.'" "Simply put, jeopardy plays no part in the determination of whether a successive prosecution is statutorily barred"  by the law, he said.

"For these reasons, we overrule Smith to the extent that it can be read to stand for the proposition that the dismissal of a criminal charge amounts to an 'acquittal' for the purposes of OCGA 16-1-8, and further overrule Smith, its progeny, and the cases in which it has been cited" in support of that proposition, Rickman said.

Assistant Athens-Clarke County District Attorney Reid Peacock said via email that opinion was an important clarification of court  regarding the "meaning and scope of O.C.G.A. 16-1-8, as it relates to successive prosecutions by state and federal governments, and preserves the State of Georgia's authority to enforce its criminal laws."

Adams' attorney, Athens-Clarke County Assistant Public Defender Kelly Wegel, was not available on Friday.