Burden of Proof in Georgia Criminal Case

Throughout this whole process, there’s different burdens that the prosecutor and the police have to pass in order to arrest you, in order to have things come in at motions hearings, and then at a trial. When they arrest you, they’ve got to have what’s called probable cause. So it’s probably got to have happened what they think happened. Then, when you get to motions hearing, we’ve got specific things, specific pieces of evidence and facts and points of law that they have to prove and the judge rules whether or not that does or does not come in. It’s when we get to a trial, either a bench trial or a jury trial, that we talk about proving things beyond a reasonable doubt for the prosecutor. What that means is that if a juror has any doubt whatsoever that they think it didn’t happen or it didn’t happen the way the prosecutor said it did, they can come back and find not guilty.

Beyond a reasonable doubt is the highest possible standard in all the legal profession, because we want to make sure that we do not convict someone if there’s any doubts in a juror’s mind of any of the evidence or any element that the prosecution is saying that they did. Once the cops arrest you, they already believe you’re guilty. What we’re able to do by looking at the evidence, by collecting our own evidence, by really attacking the state’s discovery is we’re able to present things and present ideas, present people to show them that you’re not the guilty person that they think you are.