A man whose murder conviction was thrown out by the judge overseeing his first trial was recently acquitted of all charges at his retrial.
On Friday, a Fulton County jury found Dexter Beard not guilty of all charges, including murder and aggravated assault, after about three hours of deliberations, said Jessica Seares, who represented Beard on appeal and assisted public defenders who represented him at trial last week.
“I’m proud to have been part of this multi-year effort for justice for Mr. Beard,” Seares said. “I’m thrilled that the jury agreed with the defense that the state was far from meeting its burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
In December 2015, Dexter Beard was convicted of the murder of Selemon Belai and the aggravated assault of three others. He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison.
But Senior Superior Court Judge Doris Downs, who presided over Beard’s trial, later granted him a new trial. She did so under authority given to trial judges by Georgia law, but which is rarely used — exercising her discretion as the so-called 13th juror. In her ruling, Downs said the case was “filled with conflicting evidence and credibility concerns as to almost every eye witness and the chief investigating officer.”
The Fulton DA’s office appealed Downs’ decision and the Georgia Supreme Court responded with a pointed opinion. It not only upheld Downs’ ruling, it told the then-District Attorney Paul Howard and his office to stop wasting the court’s time.
In a concurring opinion, then-Justice David Nahmias said prosecutors should “think hard about whether the appeal will amount to anything other than an unnecessary delay in the new trial and a waste of limited resources of the state, the publicly funded lawyers who represent most of the defendants in these cases and this court.”
Credit: GPB
Credit: GPB
When asked for comment, DA’s office spokesman Jeff DiSantis said, “We respect the jury’s verdict.”
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