Like many other government agencies, the District Attorney’s office has suffered from recent budget shortfalls.
District Attorney Brad Smith said most of his funding goes to personnel costs, so the budget restraints have been particularly difficult.
Due to the current hiring freeze, Smith is short three employees in the Barrow County office and is down one attorney in the Jackson County office.
Smith said the system is completely overloaded.
“We are over capacity,” he said. “We need to have four judges and we only have three. You can’t do anything without judges sitting on the bench.”
Though no funding exists to add additional attorneys or judges, Smith’s office continues to deal with a large number of criminal cases.
So far this year, the District Attorney’s office has prosecuted 1,523 cases. If that pace holds steady, Smith estimates his office will have prosecuted 1,800 cases by year’s end.
While the most serious cases may be tried in court, the vast majority will be disposed of through plea agreements.
“We have ten trial weeks a year. That is 50 days a year to try cases,” Smith said. “Figure two to three days per case. At a maximum, we can have 20 trials per year.”
Though every defendant has the right to a trial, most will decide to accept a plea agreement rather than wait for a trial date or risk the uncertainty of a jury trial.
“A plea is just another way to dispose of a case,” Smith said. “It’s all in the hands of the defendant.”
Smith’s office is required to present a sentencing recommendation to the judge for every case. Defense attorneys review the proposed sentence before making plea recommendations to their clients.
“Every case is different as to why people [accept pleas],” Smith said. “Uncertainty scares everybody. People have different motivations as to why they would plead guilty rather than going to trial. A lot of people just want to get it over with.”
Smith said probation will be at least part of the recommended sentence in most cases. In some cases, the sentence will be probation only, in others it will be confinement followed by probation. Fines, restitution and other sentencing conditions are added as warranted.
The sentence depends on both the charges and the surrounding circumstances.
“Generally a third of all our cases are what I call garbage cases. They have no business being in the court system at all clogging it up,” he said. According to Smith, many of those cases involve charges resulting from disputes between family members or cases in which the victim presses charges while angry or under the influence and later does not wish to prosecute.
Smith said other cases which begin as good cases may become unprosecutable.
“Maybe a piece of evidence was lost, maybe an important witness has recanted their statement or gone missing. That happens a lot,” Smith said. “They are just garbage cases that have to moved.”
Sometimes those cases are not prosecuted at all, other times the charges are reduced.
“When you only get 20 trials per year, you cannot be wasting good resources and time on those kind of cases,” he said.
Another third of the caseload is comprised of what Smith refers to as “limited damage to society” cases.
Those cases include crimes such as traffic offenses, shoplifting and other minor, non-violent acts.
“They are crimes and you do prosecute them, but they have a limited danger to society,” Smith said. “Those are almost always going to be given probation.”
Prior to being elected, Smith said one of his major goals would be to improve efficiency in the courts. Smith has worked to reduce the number of “garbage” cases entering the system.
“We are doing a much better job of getting the cases dismissed ahead of time,” he said. “A lot of the cases that are coming now are cases that were indicted under the previous administration that should never have been charged. We are having to work through those.”
The remaining cases are the ones requiring far more attention.
“That is where we have to put our serious resources,” Smith said. “We have a really good track record with those cases.”
Recent serious crimes prosecuted by Smith’s office include cases involving aggravated battery, rape, statutory rape, murder, armed robbery, gang charges and felony drug crimes. In each of the cases, the defendant was sentenced to at least ten years in prison and in at least one case, the perpetrator was sentenced to three life sentences.
“We have some very serious cases that come through that we give them serious time on,” Smith said.
Despite limited manpower and funding, Smith said his office is getting the job done.
“We just have fewer people to do the work that needs to be done,” he said. “Criminals don’t take furlough days like we do.”
