Georgia Supreme Court Argument Focuses on Weaknesses in (and unconstitutionality of?) Statewide Indigent Defense System
According to yesterday’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a lawyer appointed to represent an accused double murderer urged Georgia’s high court to either dismiss the charges or prohibit the prosecution from seeking the death penalty because the state’s indigent defense fund has “been unable to pay for attorneys fees, investigators, or expert witnesses.” The Gwinnett County district attorney agreed that the state’s public defense system, which was created by the legislature in 2003, is broken, and went so far as to argue that “the indigent defense statute violates the separation of powers because it transfer[s] control of funding capital cases from trial judges to the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council.” But, the prosecuting attorney contended that the matter should be sent back to trial as a capital case.