The head of the agency in charge of finding legal counsel for people accused of crimes is struggling to hire public defenders across Georgia.
“The issue is not funding. The issue is we still cannot find attorneys,” said Omotayo Alli, executive director of the Georgia Public Defenders Council (GPDC) during an appropriations hearing at the state capital last week in front of lawmakers.
Alli’s admission follows a series of investigations by Atlanta News First which uncovered hundreds of people without legal representation last year. Some of the accused languished behind bars for months while the agency searched for attorneys.
In an interview with Atlanta News First in November, Alli painted a completely different picture of reliable access to public defenders.
When asked if GPDC had enough attorneys to represent defendants in Georgia, Alli confidently said, “Absolutely.”
At the time, she credited salary raises pushed through the 2022 legislative session for hiring more public defenders. “And because of that, we have been able to attract and retain more of our employees,” said Alli. “These last two years have been the most phenomenal.”
Ten days after Alli told Atlanta News First she had sufficient staff, one of her attorneys told a judge in Fulton County, Georgia the agency is still short public defenders. “We are doing everything in our power to add more attorneys. It is not happening as readily as none of us would like and I apologize for that,” said Arnold Regas, a state public defender in a virtual hearing posted on Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney’s YouTube channel.
Ragas told McBurney that the Georgia Public Defenders Council hired him to travel the state to represent defendants in judicial circuits the agency has not been able to retain attorneys for clients. “Yes, it is not sustainable for me personally to be in multiple places at the same time,” said Ragas.
The U.S. Constitution’s Sixth Amendment guarantees access to an attorney to people charged with a crime if they can’t afford one. In Georgia last year, state records show there were not enough public defenders to fulfill that right, creating a domino effect that impacted the accused, victims and trust in the criminal justice system.
Comments