Jonah Lay appeals from the trial court’s denial of his motion in arrest of judgment. We affirm. 1. In June 2004, Lay was convicted in Fulton County of felony murder and other crimes, and his trial counsel filed a notice of appeal to this Court. New appellate counsel was then appointed for Lay and filed a motion asking this Court to remand the case to the trial court to allow Lay to assert a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. On June 16, 2005, we dismissed the appeal and remanded the case “for the limited purpose of allowing a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel to be raised and heard at the earliest practicable time.” Case No. S05A1469. Eleven days later, appellate counsel sent Lay a letter indicating that another lawyer from the public defender’s office would be representing Lay, but the record does not reflect that new counsel ever appeared or that an ineffectiveness claim has been raised or heard in the nearly six years since our remand order.1 Lay, however, has filed various pro se motions in the intervening years, including an August 3, 2010, motion in arrest of judgment. That motion asserted that Lay’s indictment was substantively defective because it did not set forth the essential elements of the “charged offense.” On August 16, 2010, the trial court summarily denied the motion, and Lay timely appealed that ruling.
2. This case raises a question of appellate jurisdiction to which we have suggested but never squarely stated the answer. See Sanders v. State , 280 Ga. 780, 782 631 SE2d 344 2006 explaining that “it is the duty of this Court to inquire into its jurisdiction in any case in which there may be a doubt about the existence of such jurisdiction”. Under OCGA § 17-9-61 a, a motion in arrest of judgment must be based on a non-amendable defect that appears on the face of the record or pleadings and “must be made during the term at which the judgment was obtained.” Lay raised a proper ground for a motion in arrest of judgment by claiming that his indictment failed to allege an essential element of the crime. See Wright v. State , 277 Ga. 810, 811 596 SE2d 587 2004 holding that such a claim is “cognizable in a motion in arrest of judgment”. And a trial court’s ruling on a motion in arrest of judgment is normally directly appealable to whichever appellate court has subject matter jurisdiction over the case. See Orr v. State , 275 Ga. 141 562 SE2d 498 2002. Lay’s motion, however, was extremely untimely, as it was filed in August 2010, many terms of court past the term in which he was convicted in June 2004. We must therefore decide whether the untimely filing of a motion in arrest of judgment precludes a defendant from appealing the trial court’s ruling on the motion.
