In 2003, the General Assembly enacted the statute presently codified at OCGA § 17-7-110,1 thereby changing the judicially established deadline for the filing of special demurrers from arraignment to 10 days after arraignment. Three years later, a Stephens County grand jury indicted Stacy Palmer on 24 counts of sexual exploitation of children. Although Palmer filed his special demurrers challenging the indictment within 10 days after his arraignment, the trial court dismissed the demurrers as untimely because they were not filed prior to arraignment. The trial court certified its order for immediate review, and the Court of Appeals granted Palmer’s discretionary application for interlocutory appeal. The Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s judgment based on what it viewed as the implications of two decisions from this Court issued after the effective date of the new statute.2 We granted Palmer’s petition for writ of certiorari and directed the parties to address the following question: Whether a special demurrer filed within ten days after the date of arraignment can properly be dismissed as untimely under OCGA § 17-7-110, as amended in 2003 But see Stinson v. State , 279 Ga. 177 2 611 SE2d 52 2005; Mason v. State , 279 Ga. 636 n. 6 619 SE2d 621 2005. As explained below, the plain language of the new statute gave Palmer 10 days following his arraignment in which to file his special demurrers, and the Court of Appeals erred in interpreting the decisions in Mason and Stinson as having effectively abrogated OCGA § 17-7-110 sub silentio . Accordingly, we now reverse.
The General Assembly adopted the statute currently codified at OCGA § 17-7-110 in 2003. It provides that “all pretrial motions, including demurrers and special pleas, shall be filed within ten days after the date of arraignment, unless the time for filing is extended by the court.” Even though Palmer filed his special demurrers “within ten days after the date of arraignment,” the trial court nevertheless dismissed them as untimely based on the Court of Appeals’ decision in Dowdell v. State .3 In Dowdell , the Court of Appeals stated in passing that “a special demurrer . . . must be raised before pleading to the indictment,” a proposition it extracted from this Court’s decision in State v. Eubanks .4 Obviously, the opinion in Eubanks did not mention the new OCGA § 17-7-110, which did not exist until 2003. However, neither does the opinion in Dowdell . Moreover, it is unclear from the Dowdell decision whether the defendant in that case was arraigned before or after the effective date of the new statute.
