It sucks to be charged with a crime. And it sucks even more to be poor and charged with a crime. But where does it suck the most to be poor and charged with a crime? It’s a question worth asking because while one would hope that the federal justice system applies equally across the country, that’s unfortunately not the case.
Because you could be poor and charged with a crime in the Southern District of Georgia, a district structured to make it nearly impossible for indigent defendants to avoid prison. The district is one of only three in the federal system without a federal defender and one that — until recently — assigned local counsel to criminal cases largely at random. All efforts to convince the judges to take action and create a dedicated office have failed. Other federal defenders characterize the court’s excuses for remaining an outlier in the federal system as myths “to cover that they really want to tamp down zealous advocacy in criminal cases.”
The New Yorker’s Charles Bethea does a deep dive into the state of indigent defense in the Southern District of Georgia, charting the district’s flirtation with a dedicated defender — viewed as mostly a patronage gesture to a retired U.S. Attorney — to its recent history assigning unqualified and ethically challenged civil practitioners to major criminal cases. The story is mind-blowing to those of us safely ensconced in the Southern District of New York bubble that simply assumed every district had to have a Defender’s office.
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But, despite being ubiquitous (if underfunded) around the country, these offices aren’t required and the district’s judges have the discretion to forego an office if they see fit. The Judicial Conference has twice recommended taking that authority away from judges — whose oversight of the program raises serious ethical concerns. Nonetheless, Congress has assiduously avoided taking action that could help poor defendants across the country. And in the Southern District of Georgia in particular.
In the Southern District of Georgia, the office created to reward a retiring prosecutor in the 1970s was closed after his successor started filing motions slowing down the court’s machine-like clearance rate.
Franklin J. Hogue, who served as the panel representative in Georgia’s Middle District—and who, in 2007, helped persuade the judges there to establish its first defenders’ office—told me that the judges of the Southern District “were legendary for being opposed to the idea” of having such an office. He added, “They wanted defense lawyers to just come in and just plead out everybody. The idea that you’d come in and mount a real defense seemed offensive to them. That’s the impression we all had.”
It’s a reminder that federal judges, regardless of which party nominated them, are disproportionately drawn from the ranks of federal prosecutors and carry those biases with them onto the bench. Two of the five total judges in the district served as U.S. Attorney before joining the court. The rest came from either Republican politics or private general practice. All three of the active duty judges were appointed by W. or Trump. The racial dynamics of the problem in this deep South district are impossible to ignore either.
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The article is a real wake-up call for anyone who thought the federal system had some baseline safeguards built in. It doesn’t. The rights of poor defendants are left entirely to the whims of judges who can be — and often are — openly hostile to criminal defendants and the risk of appellate review.
In the meantime, just don’t commit anything even approaching a crime in southern Georgia.
Is This the Worst Place to Be Poor and Charged with a Federal Crime? [New Yorker]
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.