Full Acquittal of a Minor Defendant

The case

According to the charging decision, minor G.G., with the intent to unlawfully appropriate property, secretly took jewelry from a store.

The evidence presented by the prosecution included a confession given by G.G. during the investigation, items seized from him, the record of an investigative experiment, indirect testimony from witnesses, and video recordings from surveillance cameras.

What the defense did

The defense strategy focused on assessing the admissibility, reliability, and actual probative value of each piece of evidence presented by the prosecution.

In the defense’s assessment, the seizure from G.G. of items allegedly taken secretly from the store could not, by itself, establish that G.G. was the person who had taken those items or that he had committed the offence with which he was charged. The defense emphasized that the indirect witness testimony and other evidence in the case did not establish, beyond a reasonable doubt, that G.G. had committed the crime.

On the basis of a motion filed by attorney Avtandil Giorgadze, an important result was achieved as early as the pre-trial hearing stage: the video recordings obtained from the surveillance cameras were declared inadmissible. The prosecution had relied on those recordings for the alleged identification of G.G. and to support its version of events.

One of the significant features of the case was that, during an interview at the investigation stage, G.G. admitted committing the act with which he was charged.

After attorney Avtandil Giorgadze became involved in the case, G.G. no longer accepted the information he had provided to the investigative authorities during the interview and exercised his statutory right to remain silent. The defense also emphasized that the investigative experiment merely repeated the statement given during the investigation and that no new item, trace, or other independent evidence was discovered or seized to confirm the prosecution’s version.

Accordingly, in the defense’s assessment, those pieces of evidence, in the absence of other independent direct evidence, could not establish beyond a reasonable doubt that G.G. had committed the crime.

Outcome

As a result of the defense’s consistent assessment of the prosecution’s evidence, the exclusion of inadmissible evidence at the pre-trial hearing stage, and the identification of deficiencies in the evidentiary basis of the case, the Court of Appeals issued a full acquittal in respect of minor G.G.

It is particularly important that, despite G.G.’s admission during the investigation interview that he had committed the crime, the strategy correctly chosen by attorney Avtandil Giorgadze led the court to find that the prosecution’s evidence was insufficient to establish the minor’s guilt, and the court therefore issued an acquittal.