ATLANTA — Georgia is failing to meet its constitutional duty to protect the rights of poor people accused of crimes and must radically overhaul its system of indigent defense, a blue ribbon commission appointed by the state Supreme Court said Thursday.
The commission found the state's fragmented system, which lacks quality control standards for lawyers representing the poor, enhances the possibility that innocent defendants wind up in jail and that some of the guilty stay in jail longer than they should. Indigents are supposed to see a lawyer within 72 hours of arrest but often wait weeks and sometimes months for an initial meeting with an attorney, it found.
Georgia's indigent defense system "results in an inadequate, and in many respects, unconstitutional level of services, tremendous variation in quality and serious unfairness in the operation of the criminal justice system," the 26-member commission said after completing a two-year study.
About 80% of the defendants in Georgia are indigent, "so in a lot of ways the indigent defense system is the criminal justice system," said commission Chairman Charles R. Morgan, vice president and general counsel of BellSouth Corp.
The commission -- which included judges, legislators, prosecutors, private attorneys and county officials -- recommended dramatically increased funding, but said money alone would not solve the problem.
The delivery of indigent defense services must be "reorganized to ensure accountability, uniformity of quality, enforceability of standards and constitutionally adequate representation," said the report, which was presented by Morgan and Paul Kurtz, associate dean at University of Georgia Law School, to the seven justices of the Georgia Supreme Court, who listened attentively in their courtroom.
The system should be run by a statewide board charged with the responsibility and power to hire and fire full-time defenders for each of the state's 49 judicial circuits, define guidelines for the system and conduct training programs for attorneys involved in indigent defense, the commission recommended.
Georgia's Chief Justice Norman S. Fletcher hailed the release of the report "as a great day for justice in Georgia."
He said if the report's recommendations are implemented, it would be a significant step toward providing "equal justice" in the state, where 170,000 criminal defendants qualified for a publicly funded lawyer last year.
