When the statutory law establishes different punishments for the same offense, courts sometimes apply the rule of lenity to resolve the statutory ambiguity. Properly applied, the rule of lenity directs the courts to resolve such ambiguities in favor of a defendant, according the defendant the benefit of the doubt about what punishment the law authorizes in his case, and presuming that the law was meant only to permit the lesser punishment.1 See Banta v. State, 281 Ga. 615, 617 2 642 SE2d 51 2007. Although the rule of lenity perhaps has been applied in Georgia most commonly when the statutory law established both felony and misdemeanor punishments for the same offense, see, e.g., Dixon v. State, 278 Ga. 4, 7 1 d 596 SE2d 147 2004, its application is not limited to that particular circumstance. In McNair v. State, 293 Ga. 282, 285 745 SE2d 282 2013, this Court held that the rule of lenity properly may be applied whenever there is an ambiguity that would result in varying degrees of punishment for the same offense — even an ambiguity as between different felony punishments — and we disapproved several decisions in which our Court of Appeals had concluded otherwise. Today, we consider whether our decision in McNair marked a change in the law.
In 2008, Russell Dean Rollf assaulted his estranged wife with a butcher knife and the intent to kill her. He later was tried by a jury for that offense, convicted of attempted murder, and sentenced for that crime to imprisonment for a term of years. Rollf appealed, and he argued that the law is ambiguous about whether his offense was punishable as attempted murder2 or only as aggravated assault.3 Attempted murder is punishable by imprisonment for one to thirty years, see OCGA § 16-4-6 a, whereas aggravated assault ordinarily is punishable by imprisonment for one to twenty years. See OCGA § 16-5-21 c. Because the law imposed different punishments for his offense, Rollf claimed, the rule of lenity ought to be applied, and he should have been convicted of aggravated assault, not attempted murder. The Court of Appeals, however, rejected that argument in Rollf v. State, 314 Ga. App. 596, 598 2 a 724 SE2d 881 2012, affirming Rollf’s conviction for attempted murder on the ground that, even if attempted murder and aggravated assault were the same offense, the rule of lenity does not apply as between two felony punishments. A little more than a year later, we decided McNair, and Rollf was among the decisions of the Court of Appeals that we disapproved. See McNair, 293 Ga. at 284-285.
