By Audrey Sawyer
ATLANTA, GA – The Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College (IIP) filed an amicus brief in Fulton County, GA in Georgia Superior Court this week to voice support for prosecutorial independence and the rights of local prosecutors to implement approaches supported by their communities.
The amicus brief was filed in support of a lawsuit by the Public Rights Project, on behalf of a bipartisan Georgia group of three Georgia prosecutors, including District Attorney Sherry Boston (DeKalb County), District Attorney Jared Williams (Augusta Judicial Circuit) and District Attorney Jonathan Adams (Towaliga Judicial Circuit).
All of the DAs are challenging SB 332, a new law that establishes Georgia’s Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission. The commission is imbued with the power to sanction or remove locally owned prosecutors.
The IIP is represented pro-bono by Proskauer Rose LLP, who filed their amicus brief in support of the prosecutor’s motion for an injunction to cease the commission from taking action. In 2023, the IIP had filed an amicus brief in addition to supporting Georgia prosecutors who had targeted an earlier version of the law (titled SB 92). The Georgia Supreme Court had declared SB 92 moot.
“Georgia’s new law poses a grave threat to prosecutorial independence and undermines prosecutor’s ability to fulfill their legal and constitutional obligations,” said IIP Executive Director Rachel Marshall, also a recent appointee to the ABA Task Force on Prosecutorial Independence.
Marshall adds that although prosecutors are entrusted to use their discretion to serve their communities, the statute actually “restricts prosecutors and instead advances the preferences of state officials.”
The IIP brief claims the new law is an “unlawful legislative incursion into prosecutorial authority that threatens the role of prosecutors in the legal system, harming the communities they serve.”
The brief also argues Georgia’s new statute harms prosecutors from being able to make good faith decisions for their communities, maintaining the law prevents prosecutors from speaking openly with their communities, and not only is punishing prosecutors, but hurting the communities, disempowering them as a result of a lack of transparency.
