ATLANTA, GEORGIA –On Friday, February 5, 2010, Superior Court Judge Jerry W. Baxter will hold a hearing in Maurice Flournoy, et al. v. The State of Georgia, et al., a class action lawsuit that seeks to secure lawyers for indigent persons in Georgia who have been convicted of offenses carrying a term of incarceration and who are currently without legal representation. Lawyers from Bondurant, Mixson and Elmore, L.L.P.; Garland, Samuel and Loeb, P.C.; Moraitakis, Kushel, and Pearson, LLP; Martin Brothers, P.C.; and the Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR) will argue that the Constitution and state law mandate that indigent defendants in Georgia be provided with counsel at every stage of a criminal prosecution, including the motion for new trial and direct appeal.

“Poor people across the State of Georgia are without resources and without representation in their pending criminal appeals – all they have at this point is hope,” said Lauren Sudeall Lucas, staff attorney at SCHR. “We are simply asking for the State to honor its legal obligation to provide each of these individuals with counsel so that their faith in the criminal justice system is not misplaced.”

Two of the named plaintiffs have been incarcerated for more than three years and do not currently have counsel to represent them in their motion for new trial proceedings; others have been denied appellate counsel for at least a year. One of the named plaintiffs has been without appellate counsel for almost a year and, as of May 2009, he had been informed by Georgia Public Defenders Standards Council (GPDSC) that he was number 105 on the Council’s backlog list. At the very least, there are nearly 200 people without representation on appeal, many of whom have been waiting for over a year since their convictions and sentencings to be appointed appellate counsel.

Michael A. Caplan, representing the Plaintiffs for Bondurant, Mixson, & Elmore, LLP, states, “This hearing is critical in determining whether the State will be allowed to continue to deny almost 200 people throughout Georgia their right to counsel. Especially for the man who has waited now 7 years in prison for an appellate lawyer, we hope that the wheels of justice will begin turning again.”

Severe budget cuts in the past two years have rendered the Appellate Division of the Georgia Public Standards Council inadequately staffed and funded to meet the constitutional obligations to provide counsel to those convicted of crimes. As a result of severe budget cuts, the Appellate Division is now staffed by only two full-time and one part-time staff attorneys. The funding available for contracted private counsel who can also take on such appeals has also been cut in half. If the State does not meet its obligation to fund indigent defense, then the courts will require them to do so. Gerry Weber, staff attorney at SCHR states, “The list of unrepresented defendants grows daily, and the hope of getting a lawyer this year or next becomes an ever more distant and dimming light”

The named defendants in Flournoy v. State include: Governor Sonny Perdue, State Treasurer W. Daniel Ebersole, GPDSC Director Mack Crawford, GPDSC Chairman Michael L. Berg, GPDSC Director of Conflicts Jim Stokes and GPDSC Appellate Division Director Jimmonique Rodgers.

This is SCHR’s fourth bout of litigation in response to Georgia’s current indigent defense crisis. In June 2008, Crawford attempted to close the Metro Conflict Defender office. However, enforcing the constitutional rights of people facing criminal charges without an attorney, SCHR stopped the closure of the well-regarded office. In April 2009, a lawsuit was filed by SCHR in the Northern Judicial Circuit where over 300 people facing criminal charges had no lawyer because the state failed to provide enough lawyers to represent defendants in conflict cases. This case is ongoing. And on November 10, 2009, SCHR presented arguments to the Georgia Supreme Court on behalf of Jamie Weis, a mentally ill man who was denied funding for legal representation to represent him in his capital case for over two years. Similar failures to fund representation for periods of two or three years have occurred in other cases in which people face the death penalty.

For more information, please contact Kathryn Hamoudah at 404/688-1202 or khamoudah@schr.org
To read the pleadings, please visit www.schr.org