Civil rights group tries to halt GA defender firings

From the Rome News-Tribune:

A civil rights group is trying to block the state’s public defender system from closing a 21-member office at the end of the month, which it says could leave as many as 1,800 defendants in the lurch.

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.

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