Fresh Loaf

During a hearing today to determine what evidence will be admitted in the high-profile (and high-cost) Brian Nichols trial, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard took the stand to defend one of his former prosecutors, according to a story posted on AJC.com.

Former assistant district attorney Gayle Abramson, who’d been prosecuting Nichols on a violent rape charge when he went on a homicidal shooting rampage at the Fulton County courthouse, was accused by Nichols’ defense of “prosecutorial misconduct.” The defense pointed to claims made by a murder suspect in an unrelated case, who was caught on a wiretap accusing Abramson of using drugs in the past.

For some reason, Nichols’ attorneys are arguing that the drug allegations against Abramson render their client ineligible for the death penalty. Yeah, right.

According to the AJC.com story, Howard called the accusations a waste of time:

“I just think it is extremely reaching. I just don’t see what the connection is. … The information on that wiretap was fake; it was phony; it was fabricated, so I didn’t really give any credit to what it said.”

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Lawyers from the Southern Center for Human Rights will be in court Thursday morning arguing that cuts made by the state have gutted the system to provide public defenders to the indigent.

The Georgia Public Defender Standards Council, which was formed in 2003 to handle indigent defense all over the state, hasn’t been fully funded since Republicans took over the General Assembly in 2005. As CL pointed out in a cover story on the issue, the Republican leadership got a lot of hay out of criticizing the indigent defense system for budget over-runs that the legislature actually created by underfunding the agency in the first place.

Stephen Bright, president of the Southern Center, says the decision to fire 21 public defenders in Fulton County on July 31 will throw the system into chaos.

“We are in perpetual crisis because the funding is so inadequate – the state funding for indigent defense overall is only about 1/3 of what’s needed; for capital cases it’s less than half,” Bright says via email.
The issue was first raised because of the expense of the Brian Nichols murder case. Now it has shifted to the Metro Conflict Defender Office, which represents co-defendants when conflict-of-interest rules mandate that a public defender can represent only one person in a case.

(more…)

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