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.