Georgia Fails Its Poor Defendants, Report Says
State commission finds the indigent get representation that is inadequate and urges major changes in the system of justice.
ATLANTA -- Georgia is failing to meet
its constitutional duty to protect the rights of poor people accused
of crimes and must radically overhaul its system of indigent
defense, a blue ribbon commission appointed by the state Supreme
Court said Thursday.
The commission found the state's fragmented system, which lacks
quality control standards for lawyers representing the poor,
enhances the possibility that innocent defendants wind up in jail
and that some of the guilty stay in jail longer than they should.
Indigents are supposed to see a lawyer within 72 hours of arrest but
often wait weeks and sometimes months for an initial meeting with an
attorney, it found.
Georgia's indigent defense system "results in an inadequate, and in
many respects, unconstitutional level of services, tremendous
variation in quality and serious unfairness in the operation of the
criminal justice system," the 26-member commission said after
completing a two-year study.
About 80% of the defendants in Georgia are indigent, "so in a lot of
ways the indigent defense system is the criminal justice system,"
said commission Chairman Charles R. Morgan, vice president and
general counsel of BellSouth Corp.
The commission -- which included judges, legislators, prosecutors,
private attorneys and county officials -- recommended dramatically
increased funding, but said money alone would not solve the problem.
The delivery of indigent defense services must be "reorganized to
ensure accountability, uniformity of quality, enforceability of
standards and constitutionally adequate representation," said the
report, which was presented by Morgan and Paul Kurtz, associate dean
at University of Georgia Law School, to the seven justices of the
Georgia Supreme Court, who listened attentively in their courtroom.
The system should be run by a statewide board charged with the
responsibility and power to hire and fire full-time defenders for
each of the state's 49 judicial circuits, define guidelines for the
system and conduct training programs for attorneys involved in
indigent defense, the commission recommended.
Georgia's Chief Justice Norman S. Fletcher hailed the release of the
report "as a great day for justice in Georgia."
He said if the report's recommendations are implemented, it would be
a significant step toward providing "equal justice" in the state,
where 170,000 criminal defendants qualified for a publicly funded
lawyer last year.
Only 20 of Georgia's 159 counties have full-time public defenders,
while the remaining counties use attorneys picked by judges from a
panel of attorneys who sign a contract to handle indigent cases for
a fixed fee. Those contracts have been heavily criticized; some
believe they create a disincentive to do little more than the
minimal amount of work on each case.
The commission noted that a recent Georgia Court of Appeals decision
"not only reversed a criminal conviction for ineffective assistance
of counsel, but also provided a window into the actual operation of
indigent defense" in the state.
That case involved a contract lawyer who had represented 300
indigents but had never taken a case to a jury. Rather, the lawyer
encouraged them to plead guilty.
In the case at issue, the attorney's client pleaded guilty to
injuring someone while driving drunk and received a 15-year
sentence.
The attorney interviewed no witnesses and did not once confer with
his client during the 13 months between arraignment and the entry of
the plea.
Lawton Stephens, one of the judges on the commission, said his views
on indigent defense had been dramatically affected by the testimony
earlier this year of Mark Straughn, a contract lawyer from rural
Dodge County. Straughn, who received about $50 a case, said he
believed it was a "grave error for a defense attorney to assume" his
clients were innocent. Soon thereafter, his contract was taken away
from him.
The report noted that two class-action suits, one in a rural county
and one in Atlanta, already have led to some piecemeal reforms and
that more lawsuits are anticipated. But the commission recommended
"thorough, carefully considered reform of the Georgia system" by the
state Legislature and executive branch as "far preferable to reform
by litigation."
Currently, Georgia counties fund the lion's share of the state's
$50.6-million annual expenditure on indigent defense, with the state
picking up only 11%.
The commission's recommendations come at a time when Georgia is in
the midst of a budget shortfall and newly elected Republican Gov.
Sonny Perdue has called for further belt-tightening.
Nonetheless, commission member Charles C. Clay, an influential
Republican attorney, said he thought there was a "good chance" that
the commission's structural reforms could be put in place next year.
There is "a moral imperative" on this issue, he said.
Clay, who is expected to be chairman of the state Senate judiciary
committee next year, said it would take longer, perhaps a few years,
to change the funding mechanism so the state would assume primary
responsibility, which he said the state was constitutionally
obligated to do.
The report received praise from Stephen B. Bright, director of the
Southern Center for Human Rights, which has filed five major
lawsuits in recent years contending that various Georgia counties
had failed to provide proper representation for poor defendants.
"The commission has acknowledged the undeniable -- the Georgia
system is unconstitutional -- and has provided a blueprint to fix
it," Bright said. "I agree that a comprehensive legislative solution
to this problem is preferable to piecemeal change by litigation. But
if the Legislature doesn't act, we'll continue to file lawsuits
until we bring each county into compliance with the Constitution."