A settlement has been reached in a class action suit on behalf of poor people accused of crimes in the Northern Judicial Circuit of Georgia who sat in jail for months without lawyers because the state slashed funding, but the issues opened up by the case are far from resolved.

In releasing the consent decree, Augusta Superior Court Judge J. David Roper also offered an analysis based on reviewing the case, including two days of hearings on it at the Elbert County Courthouse in March. “The Georgia indigent defense system is broken,” the judge said. “It is a mega bureaucracy adrift with no rudder.”

Roper blasted the system for a lack of accountability, effectiveness and organization.

The settlement sets guidelines for notice of cases where indigent defendants have conflicts with others being represented by the circuit public defender’s office.

Northern Circuit Public Defender Joel Shiver responded to the judge’s comments by pointing to the big picture. “The public defender system is working. We’re young. It’s a revolutionary concept, and it will take the support of far sighted individuals.” 

A full story will appear on the Daily Report’s website tonight and in print on Monday. 

–Katheryn Hayes Tucker

The funding stream intended to pay for Georgia’s indigent defense system took in $7 million more than the state allocated to defend the poor in fiscal year 2010, according to numbers released Wednesday by the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council.

The statewide indigent defense system is funded by a series of court filing-fees and add-ons known collectively as the Indigent Defense Fund, which was established when the council was created. According to the council, the three funds took in almost $44.7 million for FY 2010. The General Assembly’s final 2010 appropriation for the council totaled $37.4 million.
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The Georgia Supreme Court has dismissed a challenge to a lower court’s order mandating that convicted indigent criminal defendants be provided conflict-free lawyers to handle their appeals within 30 days of having requested a new attorney.

The high court’s opinion lets stand a February order by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry W. Baxter in Flournoy v. State, a class action brought last year by lawyers representing nearly 200 inmates who had not been assigned attorneys to handle their appeals, and some of whom had been in jail for several years after requesting an appeals lawyer. The suit, filed by The Southern Center for Human Rights and lawyers with several Atlanta law firms, sought to have new lawyers assigned in cases where the inmates claimed ineffective assistance of counsel.
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