Latest news with #HouseJudiciaryNon-CivilCommittee
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Georgia lawmaker revives wrongful conviction compensation bill with penalties for disqualified DAs
Sen. Brandon Beach, recently appointed U.S. Treasurer by President Donald Trump, amended a bill by Rep. Katie Dempsey to allow for wrongful conviction compensation when district attorneys are subsequently disqualified. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder A bill that would grant compensation to wrongfully convicted Georgians was just given a second chance after lawmakers spliced it into a bill inspired by President Donald Trump's election interference case in Georgia. Senate Bill 244, which is aimed at allowing criminal defendants to recoup their legal costs if the prosecuting attorney in their case is disqualified for personal or professional misconduct, now includes the bulk of House Bill 533, which would establish a standardized process in Georgia state law for people who have been exonerated. It passed out of the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee in a contentious vote Thursday afternoon. House lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have faced an uphill battle in their efforts to properly compensate those who have been wrongfully incarcerated. The process is currently done on a case-by-case basis through individual compensation resolutions that must pass through the full legislative process like any other bill. Legislation to standardize the process was initially introduced by Atlanta Democratic Rep. Scott Holcomb in 2022, and re-introduced in 2023, but his efforts have repeatedly been stalled in the Senate by Republican opposition. This year, HB 533, also known as the Wrongful Conviction Compensation Act, was sponsored by Rome Republican Rep. Katie Dempsey. It passed through the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee unanimously ahead of Crossover Day but never made it to a vote on the House floor. House lawmakers did, however, overwhelmingly pass a measure that included individual compensation resolutions for five people who served time in prison after being wrongfully convicted. In contrast, SB 244 was sponsored by state Sen. Brandon Beach, an Alpharetta Republican and staunch Trump ally who was recently appointed by the president to serve as U.S. Treasurer. It was originally aimed solely at allowing criminal defendants to recoup their legal costs in the event that the prosecuting attorney in their case was disqualified as a result of 'improper conduct.' The bill, Beach said, was inspired by Trump's election interference case in Georgia, in which Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was disqualified after an appeals court judge found that her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a ''significant' appearance of impropriety.' 'When you think about somebody getting indicted, it's somewhat of a scarlet letter,' Beach said at a committee hearing on the bill Tuesday. 'It is tough. It can ruin your life, and it can definitely cost you a lot in attorney's fees to defend yourself. And so I just am doing this so that people that have been wrongly accused and then the case goes away, they have some type of ability to recoup some of their fees and reasonable cost.' Democratic lawmakers on the committee objected to Beach's portion of the bill, pointing out that the bill would benefit Sen. Shawn Still, a Johns Creek Republican who was indicted in the Fulton County election interference case alongside Trump and 17 other codefendants. 'My concern is that we are specifically aiding one of our colleagues, not to mention the issue that Rep. Dempsey and Rep. Holcomb's bill is essentially being used, essentially, as political extortion,' said Rep. Esther Panitch, a Sandy Springs Democrat. Democrats also raised concerns about the disproportionate impact the law would have on smaller counties with more limited budgets, as well as fears that local district attorneys could be discouraged from prosecuting complicated cases out of fear of having to cover the cost of defendant's attorney fees, but they ultimately failed to successfully amend the bill. Dempsey also made an effort to distance her language from Beach's proposal as she presented the substitute bill to the committee. 'This is truly quite separate from the measure that Senator Beach has on the front,' Dempsey said. 'This is a completely different conversation. We are not trying to target anyone. We are trying to take a process and make it fair and remove it from the hands of the Legislature and put it into administrative law judges' hands, who are much better skilled and equipped to handle those decisions.' Though Dempsey said she was grateful that the language regarding wrongful convictions has a second chance to pass through the Legislature this year, she admitted that it may be an uphill battle to get the bill through both chambers before the 2025 legislative session ends on April 4. But in its new form, she has reason to be optimistic, she said. 'This bill is a priority for Senator Beach,' Dempsey said, adding that he could be instrumental to the bill's passage. Deputy Editor Jill Nolin contributed to this report.
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
House panel passes bill to lower chances of death penalty for people with intellectual disabilities
This undated photo shows the death chamber at the Georgia Diagnostic Prison in Jackson, Ga. Photo by Georgia DepartmentA proposal designed to minimize the potential that Georgia executes someone with an intellectual disability unanimously advanced out of a House committee Wednesday. The bill faced opposition from district attorneys opposed to the creation of a new pre-trial hearing focused solely on whether a defendant is intellectually disabled – an additional step that they argued would bog down an already lengthy process. Today, juries determine whether a defendant is intellectually disabled at the same time they are deciding whether the person is guilty or innocent. 'The problem is if you do it at the end of a trial, after a jury has seen two weeks of horrendous photos and images and stuff they wish they could unsee, it's hard to say that a jury would be unbiased and may want to up the penalty,' said Glennville Republican state Rep. Bill Werkheiser, the bill's sponsor. District attorneys who spoke to lawmakers Wednesday and at an earlier hearing objected to adding another step to the trial process, which usually precedes years of appeals. 'I think, as district attorneys, our job is to follow the law. If there's available punishments and it's appropriate in that case after reviewing the facts, to seek even the most severe punishment, then it's our job to do that,' said Randy McGinley, district attorney of the Alcovy Judicial Circuit. 'But if we're here to make the death penalty something so unmanageable to even seek … then just repeal it, make it not an option,' he said. Rep. Tyler Paul Smith, a Bremen Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee and who is a co-sponsor of the bill, pushed back on that interpretation of what the bill does. 'I don't think this bill does away with the death penalty as a whole. I think it aims to do away with it for those with intellectual disabilities,' Smith said. Smith also said to McGinley: 'This bill didn't come about because of good prosecutors like you.' Local prosecutors have, however, embraced another change in the bill that would lower the high legal bar that Georgia has set for proving someone is intellectually disabled. Georgia is the only state that requires defendants to prove beyond a reasonable doubt – which is the highest threshold possible – that they are intellectually disabled. Georgia became the first state with the death penalty to ban the execution of intellectually disabled defendants when it passed a law in 1988, which was well ahead of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said executing someone who is intellectually disabled amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. But in the nearly four decades that have passed, no one charged with intentional murder has succeeded in clearing that high bar. The district attorneys who fought the bill said this is because prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty for people who are intellectually disabled. But over the years, there have been inmates executed in Georgia whose intellectual capacities are still being hotly debated, including as recently as last year. 'We can debate that until we're blue in the face,' Michael Admirand, staff attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights. 'I think the question for this committee isn't whether or not we have. It's whether there's too high a risk that we will, and this bill would ensure that we don't.' The bill received a boost Wednesday from Majority Leader Chuck Efstration, a Mulberry Republican who made the motion that advanced the bill out of committee for the first time in the string of efforts over the years to pass a similar bill. 'It was a very loud unanimous 'yes' that ended with an applause from the committee members, and I don't know if I've seen that before,' Werkheiser said after the vote. The bill, which now heads to the gatekeeping rules committee, would not apply to anyone already on death row. Bills have until March 6 to clear at least one chamber to have the clearest path to becoming law. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
