The Georgia peach has turned rotten

not cool, GA. You made lolcat swear.

I’m going to throw some numbers at you. See if you can recover sufficiently to read the rest of this post. Ready?

475, over a year, $160,000, 187 and finally 2 and a 1/2.

Any guesses? If you guessed  active cases, time pending, funding for contract attorneys, clients without counsel as of November ’09 and finally, the number of appellate attorneys state-wide in GAs pd system, then you either deserve some sort of prize or have read this.

That’s right. Two full time and one part time appellate public defenders. Handling a caseload of 475.

I don’t think you understand.

475 divided by 2.5 = 190 appeals per lawyer. Appeals. Per. Lawyer. And it isn’t like the State of GA has stopped prosecuting and convicting people.

This is the latest stand in the war against the rape of Constitutional rights in GA. The Southern Center for Human Rights has filed a fourth lawsuit against the State of GA, seeking to ensure that adequate funding is provided. This, from their press release, nearly made me cry:

The individuals bringing forth this challenge are among nearly 200 people who have been convicted of offenses in Georgia carrying a term of incarceration who are without legal representation to assist with their appeals.  Two of the six  named plaintiffs have been incarcerated for more than three years and do not currently have counsel to represent them in their motion for new trial proceedings;  three others have been denied counsel for at least a year.  The sixth has been without appellate counsel for almost ten months and has been informed by GPDSC that he is number 105 on the Council’s backlog list; the GPDSC is unable to even estimate when he is likely to be appointed an attorney.

However, is this sorry state of affairs surprising given comments like these from the Governor’s office:

“If these lawyers were truly interested in helping the defendants, they would focus on getting them the services they need instead of chewing up state dollars on a lawsuit. Unfortunately, the state will be forced to spend already limited dollars on unnecessary litigation instead of serving these defendants,” says Chris Schrimpf, a spokesman for Governor Perdue.

That is so idiotic a statement that I would hardly bother to address it. Here’s a simple solution Mr. Schrimpf: fund them and then you won’t have to respond to these “frivolous” lawsuits that only seek to secure that funding.

This is a crisis of epic proportions that has only one foreseeable conclusion: the courts (either State or Federal) stepping in and putting a stop to this madness. [See my previous posts on Jamie Weis's appeal: one of the four lawsuits currently pending in GA.]

The real lesson from such a crisis should be a rethinking of our criminal laws. When almost every act can be criminal and when lengthy penalties are handed out for most crimes, these problems are only going to continue to grow. Perhaps we haven’t seen the full effect of the “harsh on crime” policies of states. But some day, these 30, 40, 60 year sentences are going to come home to roost. Some day, there will be thousands of men sitting in jail, taking up a bed, costing healthcare when a 20 year sentence would have sufficed. That is money we do not have and will not have. All States should be ready for this. The crisis is only going to get worse.

I talk frequently about eliminating the death penalty to reduce costs. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. In reality, States will need to do a lot more to have a more effective and efficient criminal justice system: first by taking a look at the sheer number of crimes in the statutes, then by determining whether we want to fund the prosecution, defense and incarceration costs for all those crimes, then by getting realistic and realizing that we simply cannot sustain this tidal wave of incarceration, for all the costs it has on our budget and our communities.

This money crunch is not only a product of the failing economy, but also of lawmakers’ short-sighted campaign sound bites. Until they wake up and do something about it, posts like this from a GA public defender will be the norm.