Officials blame the pandemic’s judicial emergency, which shuttered the state’s courts, for causing a backlog plaguing counties more than two years after jury trials restarted.
The Georgia Public Defender Council recently awarded them an $83,000 grant to help them recruit more attorneys.
“We had 120 lawyers on our list in January of 2020, and last July, we had less than 80,” said attorney David Lipscomb, Chairman of Gwinnett County’s Indigent Defense Governing Committee. “The number of defendants doesn’t change, the number of judges doesn’t change, the number of prosecutors doesn’t change, but the number of defense lawyers does.”
Gwinnett is one of a handful of Georgia counties that operate their own public defender system using a list of local attorneys that a judge assigns to cases. During the closure of the courts, the lawyers weren’t getting paid while the cases were on hold, so many took other jobs in other counties or private practice.
Last year Gwinnett County Commissioners allocated an additional $1 million for the Indigent Defense office--allowing them to focus on recruiting lawyers.
“We’re not where we want to be, but we’ve added a number of lawyers,” he explained.
Lipscomb still doesn’t expect the backlog to ease until June 2024.