Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill into law Friday creating a commission with the power to remove what Kemp termed “rogue or incompetent prosecutors” like Western Circuit District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez.
Senate Bill 92, cosponsored by Rep. Houston Gaines (R-Athens) and Sen. Bill Cowsert (R-Athens), creates the eight-member Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission. That group will have the power to remove district attorneys for, among other things, “willful and persistent failure to perform statutory duties.” Among those duties laid out in the bill is a duty to review every single case individually to decide whether it should be prosecuted.
“My No. 1 priority is public safety across our state,” Kemp said. “As hardworking law enforcement officers routinely put their lives on the line to investigate, confront, and arrest criminal offenders, I won’t stand idly by as they’re met with resistance from rogue or incompetent prosecutors who refuse to uphold the law. The creation of the PACQ will help hold prosecutors driven by out-of-touch politics than commitment to their responsibilities accountable and make our communities safer.”
Gaines, in particular, has frequently attacked his former House opponent Gonzalez in promoting the bill, accusing her of letting murderers go free due to incompetence. He also calls the bill a nonpartisan one that’s aimed as much at prosecutors like the ones who refused to prosecute Ahmaud Arberry’s killers as it is progressives like Gonzalez.
Gonzalez, however, says Republicans are targeting her because she’s a woman of color, and she doesn’t run her office the same way the good ol’ boys did. During her 2020 campaign and upon taking office, she pledged not to prosecute minor drug offenses. With a backlog of thousands of cases stemming from the pandemic, looking at each of those cases individually would be impossible, she maintains. And she has blamed police for bringing her cases that lack enough evidence to win convictions.
On Monday, an outside judge held the first hearing in a lawsuit brought by an Athens bar owner and Watkinsville attorney accusing Gonzalez of not doing her job. Senior Judge David Emerson, presiding because the Western Circuit’s four Superior Court judges recused themselves, declined to dismiss the case, ruling that plaintiff Jarrod Miller had standing to sue.
Emerson wrote that Gonzalez cannot pick and choose which laws to enforce. “This court finds that if the defendant has adopted such a policy [of never prosecuting marijuana possession cases], she has grossly abused her discretion,” he wrote.
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