Attorneys for Falls Church resident Michael Gardner, found guilty on three counts of child molestation last spring and facing sentencing in the Arlington Circuit Court on Sept. 7, filed an 11-page motion for an acquittal or a new trial backed by 36 pages of facts in the case, in the court yesterday. “From the earliest stages of the investigation, there were assumptions of guilt on the part of law enforcement…The lynchpin of the American justice system, the assumption of innocence until guilt is proven beyond a reasonable doubt, never attached in this case due to the perceptions about the case from the earliest stages,” the motion states.
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