Prosecutors challenge new oversight panel
Three district attorneys in Georgia have renewed their challenge of a commission created to discipline and remove state prosecutors, arguing it violates the U.S. and Georgia constitutions.
Their lawsuits filed Tuesday in Fulton County Superior Court in Atlanta challenge Georgia’s Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission, a body Republican lawmakers revived this year after originally creating it in 2023.
Democrats fear the commission has one primary goal: derailing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ prosecution of former President Donald Trump.
Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed legislation last year creating the commission, but it couldn’t begin operating, because the state Supreme Court refused to approve rules governing its conduct. The justices said they had “grave doubts” about the ability of the top court to regulate the decisions district attorneys make.
Lawmakers then removed the requirement for court approval, a change Kemp signed into law. The commission began operating April 1.
The challenge is being led by Sherry Boston, the district attorney in the Atlanta suburb of DeKalb County; Jared Williams of Augusta and neighboring Burke County; and Jonathan Adams of Butts, Lamar and Monroe counties south of Atlanta. Adams is a Republican, the others are Democrats. Boston said their “commitment to fight this unconstitutional law is as strong as ever.”
“We will continue to push back against this shameless attempt by state Republicans to control how local communities address their public safety needs and work to restore that power to Georgia voters,” Boston said in a statement.
Republicans in Tennessee, Missouri, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Florida have pushed back on prosecutors who announced they would pursue fewer drug possession cases and shorter prison sentences as a matter of criminal justice reform.
“When district attorneys fail to do their jobs, crime goes up and victims are denied justice,” Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican, said in a statement. “We’re fighting to keep all Georgians safe, and we’re fully prepared to defend this law in court.”
The Georgia law raises fundamental questions about prosecutorial discretion, a bedrock of the American judicial system that says a prosecutor decides what charges to bring and how heavy of a sentence to seek.
The prosecutors say the law violates Georgia’s constitutional separation of powers by requiring district attorneys to review every single case on its individual merits. Instead, district attorneys argue they should be able to reject prosecution of whole categories of crimes as a matter of policy.
Legislators, they argue, don’t have “freewheeling power to intrude on the core function of the district attorney: deciding how to prosecute each case.”
The law also violates the federal and state constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech by restricting what matters of public concern district attorneys can talk about when running for office, they say.