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| Panel Says Georgia's Indigent Defense System Needs Upgrade |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 01/02/2003 |
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Georgia's county-run legal defense system for the poor fails to defend their basic constitutional rights and should be replaced with a statewide program, a commission told the state's top court Thursday. The panel, appointed by the state Supreme Court two years ago, called for a state-funded, state-managed public defender system to replace an assortment of programs now run by counties and funded primarily through local tax dollars. Key policy-makers have warned for years that the state risks a federal lawsuit and costly corrective action unless it finds a better way to provide legal representation for the nearly 80 percent of criminal defendants too poor to hire a lawyer. Lawyers assigned to poor clients often are swamped with cases, critics contend, and are forced to hustle through the cases with little preparation. The commission's report relied in part on a study by the Spangenberg Group of Massachusetts, which sent researchers to 19 of the state's 159 counties and conducted interviews with hundreds of officials statewide. The group found that none of the 19 counties provided sufficient funds to assure quality representation to all indigent defendants. Collectively, state and local governments provide some $48.9 million in indigent care services; the state's share is about $7.3 million. Chief Justice Norman Fletcher called the panel's report ''a historic moment in the life of the court'' and urged commission members, lawyers, judges and activists to push state leaders to adopt the recommendations. Gov.-elect Sonny Perdue, who will be faced with cutting the state budget in January because of months of weak tax collections, sent attorney Bruce Bowers to hear the report. ''There's no question about the importance of the work they've done,'' Bowers said, ''but without having a chance to look at it and study the budget implications of it, any kind of comment, as you know, is going to be premature.'' |
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