Georgia bill alters rules on evidence

PDF: House Bill 24

A bill that the State Bar of Georgia says would better ensure fair trials is on the table again for legislators in 2011.

House Bill 24 would change the way evidence can be entered in court cases and remove archaic exceptions to the law that already have been outlawed in other states, officials said.

"This [revision] has been done in every state in the Southeast," said Thomas Byrne, chairman of the state bar's study committee on the rules of evidence. "No question there [have] been a lot of problems in cases" in Georgia because revisions haven't been made.

The bill would rewrite 150-year-old rules of evidence to model federal standards. Lawmakers backing it say they are confident it will pass next year without major opposition.

"Georgia evidence rules have been a patchwork for a century or more of strange, archaic provisions," said McCracken Poston, a Ringgold, Ga., defense attorney.

The present rules leave too much open to interpretation, said Rep. Tom Weldon, R-Ringgold, who is backing the bill.

"What it comes down to is we want to have a fair trial," he said.

One change would match federal practice on exceptions to hearsay testimony, Byrne said. Rules on entering business records into the court record also would be modernized, which would make it easier to use medical records as evidence, he said.

HOUSE BILL 24* Rewrites Georgia rules of evidence* Highlights outdated practices involving rules of evidence* Updates qualifications of expert witnesses

Poston said defense attorneys have a problem with a current practice called the "bent-of-mind" argument, which lets prosecutors bring in a defendant's past history to show his or her intent.

The bent-of-mind argument was used in Catoosa County during Tonya Craft's trial when a prosecutor tried to establish Craft's motive for allegedly molesting a child by bringing up her behavior with other adults.

Byrne said the evidence bill has been on and off the legislative docket for about 20 years. The state's district attorneys association opposed it when it was reintroduced in 2009, but withdrew opposition when exceptions were made to the bent-of-mind argument for DUI cases.

Conasauga Judicial Circuit District Attorney Kermit McManus said state DAs originally were concerned with rewriting the "entire" Georgia code on evidence.

McManus said some concerns stem from modeling state rules on federal courts and he foresees "issues with interpretations" in the future.

Contact staff writer Joy Lukachick at jlukachick@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6659. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/jlukachick.

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