Rule 44.9.Evidentiary Hearing

Rule 44.9 marks the case’s central event: the evidentiary hearing. Unlike the discretionary conferences that precede it, this step is mandatory — the court “shall conduct” the hearing within 180 days after the petition was filed.

The hearing itself follows procedures the legislature laid out in OCGA §§ 9-14-47 and 9-14-48, not procedures Rule 44 invents on its own. What Rule 44.9 adds is the deadline that pulls together everything that came before it — motions under Rule 44.6, amendments and discovery under Rule 44.7, and any pretrial conference under Rule 44.8 — and everything that follows: the transcript under Rule 44.10 and the briefing schedule under Rule 44.11.

Because so much of the rest of Rule 44 is written in terms of days “after the evidentiary hearing,” this 180-day deadline functions as the anchor date for the entire second half of the case, from transcript production through the court’s ultimate ruling.