After long delays, the APS cheating cases will finally go to trial.

The Georgia Court of Appeals has reached a verdict after spending about three months deciding  on the Garrity motion filed by the 34 defendants in August. The judges have denied the Garrity motion, which involved the defense claiming that the evidence acquired by the prosecutors to indict the APS officials was gathered unjustly. The defendants did not appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court because appeals are not allowed until after the trial.

Once the defendants were notified about the Court of Appeals’ decision, they started filing other motions to try to get pieces of evidence thrown out. Some applied for public defenders because they said they couldn’t afford to pay for their own attorneys.

Some of the defendants tried to get their statements to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation thrown out. These defendants claimed that they were compelled to answer the investigators’ questions by threats of being fired if they failed to cooperate. The judge has so far denied these requests, saying that the defendants participated in the investigation voluntarily.

The defendants have also filed a motion for severance, which, if granted, would have the cases tried individually or in small chunks instead of all together. Their justification for this is that it is fundamentally unfair to try that many people together because the jury won’t be able to keep track of each person’s claims. The judge has delayed ruling on this motion until after the final plea date of Jan. 6, 2014. On this day, defendants must enter their final plea—guilty or not guilty.

The trials are set to begin the first week in May and are expected to take about six months to complete. There are 900 witnesses who may testify, although most are on the “may-call” list rather than the “will-call” list. The location for the trial has yet to be determined. The Georgia World Congress Center and the Atlanta Civic Center are both being considered.