Just two years after the cre­ation of the Georgia Office of the Capital Defender, which suc­cess­ful­ly defend­ed 30 death penal­ty cas­es in 2006 with­out a sin­gle client being sen­tenced to death, state bud­get cuts have left the attor­neys with less than half the resources need­ed to car­ry out their cur­rent case load. The office has been asked to over­see the defense of 80 clients this year, includ­ing Brian Nichols, who faces the death penal­ty for a high­ly pub­li­cized 2005 Fulton County cour­t­house inci­dent in which four peo­ple were killed. According to pub­lic records, expens­es asso­ci­at­ed with the Nichols case have con­sumed near­ly half the bud­get of the Capital Defender this year. The office has been asked to rep­re­sent the oth­er 79 clients with the remain­ing mon­ey, an amount that attor­neys warn will neg­a­tive­ly impact the qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion pro­vid­ed to those fac­ing the death penal­ty.

Christopher Adams recent­ly stepped down as direc­tor of the Office of the Capital Defender because he said Georgia made it near­ly impos­si­ble for the office to func­tion. He not­ed that the Public Defender Standards Council, which over­sees the defend­er office, made it clear that they will not allow the staff to argue for more mon­ey for their clients in court. ​“My belief is that the only solu­tion to this prob­lem that both pro­tects our clients and com­plies with the Sixth Amendment is to go to Court to tell the truth about the lack of ade­quate resources,” Adams observed.

The office was cre­at­ed in response to crit­i­cisms of Georgia’s chron­i­cal­ly under-fund­ed death penal­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion sys­tem that was repeat­ed­ly found neg­li­gent in defend­ing cap­i­tal cas­es. Carmen Hernandez, pres­i­dent of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said that the state’s fail­ure to ade­quate­ly fund its death penal­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion office is a sharp depar­ture from the goals that led Georgia to estab­lish the pro­gram two years ago. ​“We are incred­i­bly con­cerned that a state which was on such a pos­i­tive track has so quick­ly default­ed on its promise to cre­ate a work­ing crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Georgia has refused to fund its sys­tem and, as a result, Georgia’s sys­tem is once again bro­ken. It has gone from lead­ing light to dis­grace in a few short years,” Hernandez said.

Though Georgia has estab­lished a state com­mis­sion to study the issue of financ­ing for indi­gent defense, the group has not act­ed to address the cur­rent cap­i­tal defense short­fall.
(New York Times, September 7, 2007). See Costs and Representation.

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