Earlier this week, WMAZ reported the Houston County Commissioner's vote to fire Houston County’s Public Defender Nicholas White.
Angie Coggins had worked with Nicholas White for 9 years.
Now, she and fellow staff say their old boss was fired for speaking his mind.
“Mr. White, in our opinion, was fired because he stands up for what is right, he stands up for his staff, and he stands up for the poor people of Houston County,” she said standing next to some of her colleagues.
White and his former employees say the County's Public Defender's Office is overworked.
“We, individually, close on over 300 cases a year,” she explained. “When the ABA guidelines dictate that one attorney should not carry more than 150 felony cases a year. We're closing double that.”
The average felony caseload is around 300 per year per attorney, according to Nicholas White. He says his state court misdemeanor attorneys, on average, are 200 cases above misdemeanor guidelines. White says they close about 600 misdemeanor cases per attorney per year in state court.
Both are referencing an American Bar Association guideline and a Georgia Standard for Limiting Caseloads that says each circuit public defender should not exceed 150 felony or 300 misdemeanor cases per year.
Coggins says it is a lot of work, but they are doing their best.
“There is the potential, that people will suffer,” she told WMAZ. “We have a tremendous office, we have tremendous attorneys, we have tremendous staff.”
The City of Cordele was sued over a similar issue in 2014. From 2010 to 2012 some public defense attorneys were repeatedly overworked with caseloads in the mid-to-high hundreds. In 2012, one Cordele attorney worked 323 felony cases and 628 cases total, according to records from that lawsuit.
In a 2015 consent decree at the end of that lawsuit, the Cordele office was required to hire two more full-time salaried lawyers and another investigator.
Houston County may now be facing a similar problem.
