The Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights filed a lawsuit Wednesday asking a Fulton County judge to block the closing of the Metro Atlanta Conflict Defender Office and the firing of its 16 lawyers and five investigators.
The lawsuit claims that public defender system director Mack Crawford had no plan for the 1,800 people who are now represented by the conflict office, which handles multi-defendant cases.
"Many of the people accused have been in jail since their arrests and now will remain there even longer," said Stephen Bright, the director of the civil rights group. "Removal of their counsel is unfair and prejudicial to their cases. It is unconscionable."
Crawford and other council officials did not immediately return requests for comment.
But he has said budget cuts forced him to close down the office, which handles multi-defendant cases. The council only received $5.4 million from state lawmakers for the next fiscal year - a drop from the $9 million it spent last year on conflict cases throughout Georgia.
"We've been told repeatedly, 'You need to live within this budget,'" Crawford said Tuesday at a hastily called meeting on the firings, where he also vowed to arrange counsel for the office's defendants.
"There will be no compromise for the representation of these clients," he said.
At the meeting, the council's members voted to delay a final decision until a June 20 meeting. But Crawford has already notified the office and its staffers of his decision to shut it down.
The public defender system was created in 2003 to replace the patchwork of systems across Georgia's 159 counties, some of which were contracting indigent defense cases to attorneys with little experience or knowledge of criminal defense.
Since it started in January 2005, the public defender system has struggled to win the full support of state legislators. Funding for the system has dropped from $42 million in 2005 to $35 million this year.
That's forced some belt tightening. Some 41 staffers were fired amid the first round of cuts in May 2007, and Crawford warned he would have to furlough hundreds of staffers until a fresh infusion of cash came in this March.
The center's lawsuit contends the latest firings will result in "justice on the cheap" by lawyers who are saddled with heavy caseloads or paid only a token amount.
Bright said the only way to guarantee the constitutional right of counsel to the office's clients is to keep it open until an orderly transition can be arranged.
"Anything else is going to be chaos," he said.
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On the Net:
Public Defender Standards Council: http://www.gpdsc.com/
Southern Center for Human Rights: http://www.schr.org/
http://accesswdun.com/article/2008/6/207862