By Andy Pierotti
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ALBANY, Ga. (WANF) — Sonya Holmes sits at her dining table writing a postcard to her son, whom she has not seen in person in years. She sends out at least one a week.
“It’s just a quick hello to let him know he’s always on his mind,” Holmes said.
Their son, Maurice Jimmerson, lives less than seven miles away but behind the concrete walls and barbed wire of the Dougherty County Jail. In 2013, Albany Police arrested Jimmerson and four others for double murder. Two of the co-defendants were acquitted by a jury in 2017.
Jimmerson has been behind bars for most of the past 10 years but has never had the opportunity to tell his side of the story in court. He has pleaded not guilty.
“Nobody talks about it,” said Holmes. “There is no reporting. Nothing is said about that. Maurice feels helpless.”
According to Dougherty County District Attorney Gregory Edwards, there are several reasons for delays in Jimmerson’s case, including the pandemic and a 2021 courthouse flood that temporarily halted court proceedings.
The District Attorney also blames the original judge for the raid, who allowed each defendant to be tried individually rather than all at once.
While awaiting trial, Jimmerson, now 32, briefly served time in a state prison for an unrelated felony, but Edwards said his trial could have continued during that time.
“Jimmerson’s case is a rare situation,” Edwards said. “We finally want to go to court.” He said the current delay is directly related to Jimmerson not having an attorney to represent him for months.
Court records show his attorney withdrew from the case in July 2022. “I need a public defender for my case … I’ve been waiting for a court date,” Jimmerson wrote on a September 2022 postcard from the Dougherty County jail to the county clerk’s office.
Eight months later, Jimmerson said he still doesn’t have a lawyer.
“This is an issue that is currently at crisis levels and is likely to get worse,” said Maya Chaudhuri, an attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights, an Atlanta-based civil rights organization.
In recent months, Chaudhuri said she has traveled across the state tracking down people in prison charged with crimes who have no court-appointed lawyers. Jimmyson is one of them.
The Sixth Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees a person accused of a crime the right to a speedy trial and access to an attorney if they cannot afford one. “For so many people I’ve met in prisons that have been in there for months and sometimes years, I’m the first advocate they’ve seen,” Chaudhuri said.
A cascade of failures in Georgia’s criminal justice system demonstrate why Jimmerson went so long without legal counsel.
Timeline of Events
Jimmerson’s former attorney, Benjamin Harrell, filed a motion to withdraw from the case in July and August last year. Court records show he asked to leave the case because his newborn daughter required medical attention that required travel across the state.
Harrell is a private attorney paid by the Georgia Public Defender Council to represent Jimmerson. The Defender Council, a taxpayer-funded government agency, represents 85% of those accused of a crime in Georgia.
Harrell did not respond to multiple messages asking if he had notified Defender Council before or after filing his request to leave the case. The agency also didn’t respond to questions asking if it received prior notice from Harrell.
In September 2022, Jimmerson sent a postcard to the County Clerk’s office asking someone to appoint him as the new public defender. Supreme Court Justice Victoria Darrisaw’s paralegal, who is now leading the case, told Atlanta News First Investigates that her office was not aware of Jimmerson’s request at the time.
On March 21, 2023, the Southern Center told the Defender Council that Jimmerson did not have an attorney. “Mr. Jimmerson has now been without a C-3 counsel for nine months, while two of his co-defendants were on trial years ago,” Chaudhuri wrote in a letter. “He is in a residential home for people with mental illness and is only allowed his cell to anyone left for an hour on the second day.”
The Southern Center said the agency never responded.
On April 11, 2023, Atlanta News First Investigates emailed Darrisaw’s office asking why she had never signed an order allowing Harrell to withdraw from the case.
On April 12, 2023, Darriasaw’s paralegal told Atlanta News First Investigates by phone that staff had accidentally misplaced the order when it was originally requested in 2022. A few hours later, the order was filed with the clerk.
On April 14, 2023, Atlanta News First Investigates emailed Natalie Glaser, the Defender Council’s chief legal officer, to let the agency know that Jimmerson did not have an attorney.
On April 17, 2023, attorney Angela Dillion filed an appearance to represent Jimmerson. According to her mailbox, Dillon is the agency’s regional defender for the Southwest.
The Defender Council argues that Jimmerson had an attorney the entire time because Darrisaw never signed and filed the order removing Harrell from the case.
“A court error, if one has occurred, does not relieve Mr. Harrell of his responsibility or his representation,” said Thomas O’Conner, communications director for the Defender Council. “Legally and in fact, Mr. Harrell was Mr. Jimmerson’s attorney until April 12; Claims to the contrary are deliberately misleading.”
The South Center disagrees. “To claim that Mr Jimmerson was ‘represented’ in these circumstances makes a mockery of the right to legal counsel,” Chaudhuri said. “This is certainly not the kind of ‘representation’ that anyone would pay money for.”
To determine how many people in Georgia need legal counsel, the Southern Center submitted several public record requests to the Defender Council this year. It specifically searches for people charged with crimes, including multiple defendants in the same case, who need attorneys. These individuals typically need attorneys known as “conflict” or “C-3” attorneys, who are often private attorneys paid by the state to represent those in need. Cases in which multiple defendants are charged with the same crime must be represented by different offices and attorneys to avoid conflicts of interest.
In a letter the Southern Center sent to Georgia’s Attorney General in February, it alleges that the Defender Council “deliberately makes obtaining records more difficult” by overcharging documents and providing “increasingly incomplete records.”
The agency said that was wrong. “[The Georgia Public Defender Council] complies with the law in responding to all requests for documentation,” said O’Conner. “[The Southern Center] routinely submits requests for large sets of data and records that require significant administrative effort to fulfill.”
A spokesman for the attorney general’s office said it received the Southern Center’s letter but was unable to mediate the dispute because its office acts as legal counsel for all state agencies, including the Defender Council. The Southern Center’s likely only legal recourse is civil litigation.
Chaudhuri said many of the requested records had previously been provided by the Defender Council fairly quickly and at a reasonable cost. “The only thing that has changed in that time is the media attention and public scrutiny that the Georgia Public Defender Council is currently receiving,” Chaudhuri said.
Since December, Atlanta News First Investigates has published several investigations highlighting the shortage of court-appointed attorneys and its impact on the state’s criminal justice system.
It’s an issue Georgia Public Defender Council director Omotayo Alli has repeatedly pushed back on. “These last two years have been the most phenomenal,” Alli said in an interview last November.
In a video posted to Fulton County Government Television’s YouTube page in March, Alli said the agency was fully staffed. “We have more employees than at any time in the agency’s history. We have more funding than at any time in the agency’s history, in the last two years,” Alli said.
Several judges across the state say otherwise, including Arthur Smith, president of the Council of Superior Court Judges of Georgia, who says he’s experienced the issue in his own courtroom.
“We don’t have enough public defenders to do the job,” said Smith, whose courtroom is in Columbus. “The lack of public defenders is slowing down the court process because, as I said, we will not enter a guilty plea or hear a motion from a defendant who wishes to be represented unless he or she has counsel.”
The chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court acknowledged the issue in his justice address to lawmakers in March.
“Public defense offices also have a very difficult time recruiting and retaining attorneys,” Chief Justice Michael Boggs said. “Meanwhile, and not surprisingly, there is an increasing number of pending criminal cases and with them the wait for accused but unconvicted defendants who are sitting in local jails awaiting that state indictment or trial. And of course, as you know, punishment should follow conviction, not precede it.”
This story is part of a series on constitutionally guaranteed access to legal representation in court and the challenges that arise when the supply of defense counsel is limited. Part one of the series addresses the defendants’ desperate need for representation. Part two looks at judges being forced to take actions that can erode public confidence in the justice system. In part three, former public defenders explain why they quit the job. Part four is about finding solutions. Part five shows the agency’s director admitting to lawmakers that the Defender Council doesn’t have enough lawyers. Part six explains why the defense counsel would not pay for investigative resources for a penniless defendant.
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