ATLANTA (AP) – Georgia’s highest court said Monday that it lacks authority to hear a pretrial appeal from a man charged with killing a high school teacher whose disappearance remained a mystery for more than a decade.
The state Supreme Court in March delayed Ryan Duke’s murder trial so it could consider whether it had jurisdiction to hear his emergency pretrial appeal. In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Charles Bethel, the high court concluded it does not.
Jury selection had been scheduled to begin April 1 in Duke’s trial. He faces charges including murder in the death of teacher and beauty queen Tara Grinstead in rural Irwin County.
Grinstead was 30 in October 2005 when she disappeared from her home in Ocilla, about 185 miles (about 300 kilometers) south of Atlanta. A billboard with her photo and a tip line number loomed for years in the area, and hope remained that she’d be found alive.
Her death was confirmed when Duke and another man were arrested in February 2017.