Keith Malik Beasley was charged with felony theft by shoplifting under a Georgia statute that escalates the offense when the defendant has three or more prior shoplifting convictions. One prior charge had been resolved by a nolo contendere plea. The trial court denied Beasley’s motion to quash and special demurrer, and he obtained an interlocutory appeal. The Georgia Court of Appeals held that the shoplifting statute did not authorize treating a nolo contendere plea as one of the prior convictions needed to charge the felony version of the offense. Although the sentencing statutes permit a court to consider such pleas at a presentence hearing, that separate rule did not expand the shoplifting statute’s charging language. The court therefore reversed the denial of Beasley’s motion. A special concurrence agreed with the result and would have expressly overruled earlier decisions inconsistent with the statute’s text.