The Middle Judicial Circuit is five Georgia counties: Candler, Emanuel, Jefferson, Toombs, and Washington. One District Attorney's office prosecutes every felony in all five.
The District Attorney is the State's lawyer. When someone is charged with a felony in this circuit, this office decides what the charge will be, presents the case to a grand jury, tries it before a trial jury or resolves it, and stands with the victim from the first phone call to the last hearing. Police investigate and arrest; the District Attorney's office decides what gets charged and prosecutes it. That charging decision happens before any judge or jury ever sees a case, and it belongs to this office.
The job doesn't end at the verdict. When a conviction is appealed, this office represents the State before the Georgia Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of Georgia, defending the jury's verdict on the record.
Felonies in Superior Court belong to the District Attorney. Every county in this circuit also has a State Court with its own Solicitor-General, who handles misdemeanors there. If your case is a felony anywhere in these five counties, it comes through this office.
Serious felonies are presented to a grand jury of citizens from the county where the crime occurred. The grand jury decides whether there is probable cause to indict. Grand jurors are drawn from the same rolls as trial jurors, and their service is one of the two ways citizens directly run the justice system. The other is the jury box at trial.
Felony prosecution in Candler, Emanuel, Jefferson, Toombs, and Washington counties is handled by District Attorney Tripp Fitzner and the assistant district attorneys of this office. The office's main location is in Swainsboro, with staff serving every courthouse in the circuit.