Tag Archive for: Indigent Defense

Rob Teilhet Resigns as Head of Georgia Public Defender Standards Council

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Rob Teilhet has tendered his resignation as head of GPDSC after only three months in office. Peach Pundit reports on the resignation in a blog post yesterday. I thought his days might be numbered when I met him last month. He came to a conference of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and spoke to the group. If you don’t know the history, the fact that the new-appointed head of defending the poor was coming to speak to a group dedicated to defending the accused would not seem particularly controversial. And anywhere else but Georgia, such an appearance would probably be expected.

However, if you know something about the history of this organization, you’d know that Mr. Teilhet’s appearance before GACDL might have not been a wise political move.

GPDSC is a political organization — a really unpopular political organization.

GACDL is a non-profit organization whose mission is, in part “to promote constant improvement in the administration of criminal justice.” In Georgia, the head of GPDSC is not expected to advance the administration of justice.In some other state maybe. But not Georgia. We don’t coddle criminals here. Go to some liberal state like Alabama if you’re looking for that. The people ruling Georgia didn’t major in political science so that they could help the poor or better the court system. The fact that the poor might need lawyers doesn’t inspire the inner Atticus Finch of Georgia Republican. The fact that Georgians accused of crimes might need lawyers inspires the same feeling that I get when I need to rake the leaves in the front yard. I generally would rather just cut down the trees once and for all.

I’m not saying that Mr. Teilhet’s appearance at GACDL was what cost him his job. GACDL probably doesn’t register enough on the Republican radar for that. Though an appearance of the head of GPDSC at a GACDL event is very rare (the goals of the two organizations being at odds with one another and all). Rather, it seemed that Mr. Teilhet was going to do a good job. And that may have been where things began to go wrong for him.

Or a simpler explanation is that the governor-elect has someone else in mind for the job as a “favor.” Which may be even less benign than what I’ve suggested above. Because if being the head of GPDSC is essentially a political position, then indigent defense will likely continue to suffer.

The criminally accused are not a very popular political constituency.

SCOTUS Denies Cert on Weis

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One more vestige of the Johnnie Caldwell legacy will remain in place, for a little while anyway. Greg Land at the Fulton Daily Report notes that the United States Supreme Court has denied Jamie Ryan Weis’s petition for certiorari. Mr. Weis has been sitting in the Spalding County Jail since 2006 charged with murder. His case has not yet gone to trial because the State has funded his prosecution but not his defense. In 2007, Mr. Caldwell removed his death penalty defense lawyers with state-salaried lawyers. On appeal, the Supreme Court of Georgia found no speedy trial violation, in part, blaming Mr. Weis for the delay because he objected to the trial court’s decision to treat his lawyers as fungible. At oral argument, some of the justices suggested that capital defense counsel should be required to donate their time.

Stephen Bright, appellate counsel for Mr. Weis, remains hopeful:

Weis can come back to the court on direct appeal after conviction, and he can petition the federal courts for habeas corpus relief,” Bright said. “I am confident that the Supreme Court or some other reviewing court will recognize the constitutional violation and set aside any conviction that might be obtained. It is just unfortunate that the way the Georgia Supreme Court is treating the right to counsel could not have been corrected at this time in order to avoid unnecessary trials that will be reversed.

The Washington Post chronicled the disturbing story in its September 25 edition.

Superior Court Judge Says Georgia Indigent Defense is Broken

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Before today, I had never seen an Order styled “Court’s Analysis of Indigent Defense System.” Judge J. David Roper of Richmond County, Georgia entered this document into the record on the same day that he entered a consent order involving a suit between the Southern Center for Human Rights and the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council. By order, conflict defenders can only carry a caseload of 125 felony cases or 300 misdemeanors at a time, and requires the local Public Defender to notify the central office within 24 hours of realizing that there is a conflict.

The interesting thing about the case is the apparently gratuitous memorandum filed contemporaneously with the Order. The Judge entered findings of fact that the problems with indigent defense in Georgia are systemic and are much bigger than budgetary. For instance, the director of the standards council has no supervisory authority over Circuit Public Defenders. When the director was asked who was responsible for circuit public defenders, the director said “Judge, I really don’t know.”

The Council is in the executive branch, the same branch as the police and the prosecutor. The council’s director is appointed by and serves at the pleaseure of the Governor. The Director lacks the ability to remove the Circuit Public Defender, but the Circuit Defender may be removed with or without cause.

For conflict cases, the Circuit Public Defender must set in place a procedure for dealing with conflicts (cases where a single lawyer cannot represent multiple parties because they have an incentive to blame each other). However, when the Circuit Public Defender declares a conflict, the Standards Council pays for the representation — essentially a financial incentive to find conflicts.

Taking these facts and others into account, the judge found that “the present system is fraught with a lack of accountability, especially at the circuit level.” He also wrote that the system is broken and describes it as “a mega-bureacracy adrift with no rudder.”

It is good to see that calls for reform in the system are coming from the ground up. The Supreme Court has punted at nearly every opportunity to weigh in. Perhaps the local judges on the front lines are more aware of how it is falling apart and appear to be the most willing to do something about it. It’s enough to make a person cynical about the appellate process.

Jamie Weis Appeal Puts Georgia’s Criminal Justice System on Trial

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Adam Liptak’s recent editorial in the New York Times will provide comfort for those of us who have watched the legislature and governor gut indigent defense in Georgia and attack the judiciary systematically. At the same time, it is a little embarrassing to read about the system that I love so much and wonder what the rest of the world must think of us. Reading national press on Georgia during the civil rights movement must have been like this. At the same time, the heroes in this story, such as those with the Southern Center for Human Rights are Georgia appellate lawyers working to make a difference. So, there’s a good bit to be proud of, too.

In fact, the Jamie Weis story demonstrates the difference appellate lawyers can make for the client and to the very system that has so far undermined him. It makes me proud to be a Georgia criminal appellate lawyer.

So, in case you missed it, here’s the story. Jamie Weis was indicted for murder in the Griffin Judicial Circuit. He has been in jail awaiting trial since 2006. August of that year, he was noticed with the intent to seek the death penalty. By March, 2007, the lawyers who had represented him for the beginning couldn’t get any more money to fund the defense. The State has adequate funding to try to convince a jury to kill Mr. Weis. But when the money ran out, the prosecutors were allowed to pick their opponent. They convinced Judge Caldwell — yep, that Judge Caldwell — to replace the lawyers with salaried public defenders. On its way to issuing a  4-3 Decision (PDF) determining that it was okay to substitute cheaper lawyers chosen by the State, one of the justices suggested at oral argument that defense counsel should work for free. He never suggested that the judge or prosecutor should work for free.

The damage has continued. Recently the Court dodged a similar challenge out of Cobb County, Phan v. State (PDF) where it had another opportunity to declare that indigent defense in Georgia is broken. They punted the case back to the trial court to make a determination that it had already made. Phan is to Weis what those two little girls are to each other in the Overlook Hotel in The Shining — not quite identical but really disturbing.

But there is hope in the combination of Georgia Appellate Lawyers, the U.S. Supreme Court, and recent media attention. Hopefully, all of those forces can overcome the other two branches of government in the Georgia political establishment (see the reference to the girls from The Shining).

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