Seven peo­ple on Georgia’s death row are with­out legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion as they face their final rounds of appeal. Georgia does not guar­an­tee pub­licly fund­ed lawyers for death row inmates beyond the first round of appeal. According to many legal experts, includ­ing retired Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Harold Clark, the fail­ure to pro­vide legal coun­sel increas­es the like­li­hood of a wrong­ful exe­cu­tion. ​“It’s a very impor­tant check in the sys­tem that’s miss­ing. There can be slips in the process along the way. When you’ve got a per­son sit­ting on death row who should­n’t be there, I can’t think of many things more seri­ous than that,” said Clark.

Currently, the Georgia Appellate Practice and Educational Resource Center rep­re­sents 55 of the state’s 113 death row inmates, but the lack of suf­fi­cient fund­ing and staff pre­vent it from tak­ing all the cas­es on death row. The Center has asked Georgia’s leg­is­la­ture for a 25% increase in its bud­get to off­set the loss of three attor­neys who had been fund­ed through fel­low­ships. If the fund­ing increase is denied or if the Center’s bud­get is cut, dozens of oth­ers on Georgia’s death row could be with­out legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion. ​“That would be a pub­lic dis­as­ter,” said Emmet Bondurant, who chair’s the Center’s board. ​“You’ll be basi­cal­ly increas­ing the odds that peo­ple will be exe­cut­ed whose con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were vio­lat­ed or who, as the DNA exon­er­a­tion cas­es have shown, may be…actually inno­cent.”

(Associated Press, January 18, 2005). See Representation.

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