Preponderance of the Evidence

“I went to court for the civil protection order hearing, and I showed the judge because the burden of proof is lower in a civil protection order hearing as to whether or not they grant that permanent order. I showed the judge all the ways this other person's story did not make sense. It didn't hold up. And I pointed out all the holes in their credibility and the flat out lies.”

“At that civil protection order hearing the judge said, that they were not going to grant the civil protection order to be made permanent because there was not sufficient evidence to substantiate that charge. Now, this is interesting for my client because the burden of proof in a civil protection order hearing is that the judge has to find by a preponderance of the evidence that the issues surrounding the need for the protection order, so usually it's a specific incident, and in this case it was a specific incident alleged, that this incident gave rise to the need for a permanent protection order to be granted.”

“So, legally, I know I'm throwing a bunch of legal jargon out at you, but legally what that means is a preponderance of evidence level is about here. And then for reasonable doubt which is what everyone knows as the criminal standard beyond a reasonable doubt is what you need to prove someone is guilty of a crime before a jury can convict them. Beyond a reasonable doubt is here. So, in essence, what happened is a civil judge said, you're not even to this threshold which then gives me the leverage when we go to court on the next date to tell the DA, it wasn't even found at this level.”

“For example, and I have my client's permission to talk about this, I had a case very, very recently where my client was charged with domestic violence and had a multitude of domestic violence charges leveraged against them.”