Questions about violent crime dominate Tuesday's DA debate – The Oconee Enterprise

by Michael Prochaska

Tuesday's Western Judicial Circuit district attorney's debate covered topics ranging from shoplifting to truancy to gang activity, but the most violent crimes – namely rape, child abuse and murder – appeared in several questions, leading to the final question of the The evening's moderator Tim Bryant said: Why bring in an outside prosecutor for Laken Riley's murder?

Riley was a 22-year-old nursing student who was found bludgeoned to death on the University of Georgia campus by a defendant who had entered the United States illegally. Incumbent Democratic District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez has tapped Atlanta-based prosecutor Sheila Ross, who successfully prosecuted all three defendants in the 2021 murder of Oconee County resident Joey Jackson.

In addition to noting Ross's impressive track record, Gonzalez began her answer by stating that she did not want the “community” to be distracted by the political aspect of a Latino prosecutor prosecuting a Latino defendant.

Bryant then asked Gonzalez why the death penalty was not on the table as a prosecution strategy to potentially get the defendant to plead guilty to life in prison. In his question, Bryant pointed out that Gonzalez had used an anti-death penalty platform.

Gonzalez said she has had discussions with Riley's family about the charges and appropriate punishments, but stressed that state-sanctioned execution should not be used as a “false threat.”

“If we view this as a death penalty, we must be willing to go to the end and not just use it as a strategy to complain,” she said.

Independent DA candidate Kalki Yalamanchili said the DA or an ADA should He's handling a case like this, but since he questions the competence of Gonzalez and her prosecutors, he's glad the murder case was left to Ross.

“We don’t have a prosecutor’s office that can deal with serious crimes,” Yalamanchili said. “And if we're talking about justice for all, why does a high-profile case get a competent prosecutor while many other victims, including murder cases, don't get a special prosecutor? This is not justice for all.”

Violent crime became the focus of the discussion after Bryant asked about Marsy's Law, a state law that protects victims' rights and which Gonzalez has violated a few times.

Gonzalez clarified that she was not personally found in violation, but that it was her entire office. That answer drew groans in one of several moments in which audience members — both for and against Gonzalez — heckled, heckled, cheered, murmured or screamed from the audience during the debate.

“We spend every day talking to victims and working with them,” Gonzalez said. She pointed to the work her office has done to certify victim advocates, launch a college social work internship and create a lounge for trauma-informed victims. She said her staff is learning from court-ordered victims' rights training courses and that her prosecutors deserve the grace to learn from their mistakes. However, after Yalamanchili specifically pointed out that the DA's office was dismissing the case of a man who had molested his own daughter (at the request of a judge, a district attorney from a neighboring judicial district later took up the case and secured a guilty verdict), Gonzalez gave up blamed the former ADA assigned to the case, saying that “this is one of the reasons he is no longer in the office.”

“As a prosecutor, I can’t look at every single case in the office,” she said. “My ADAs have a certain level of autonomy in their decisions.”

Yalamanchili said ADA autonomy should be determined based on the severity of the case.

“These are not numbers; These are people who are victims of crime and have been denied justice in their case,” he said. “This should never happen when a child is sexually abused or someone is killed.”

“In the case of incest rape of a child, I want to know what will happen to the case before a decision is made,” he continued. “Anything that has to do with murder, rape or child abuse…that's ultimately the prosecutor's responsibility. “That's not something you can pass on to lower-level staff.”

Gonzalez said more than 150 people — prosecutors, investigators and victim advocates — signed up for the victim rights course.

“There is a lot of ambiguity there [law]” she said. “We regularly take part in these training courses. But the finding that there was so much interest also shows that there is a lot of confusion, not just in my district but across the state, about what these mean and how to comply with them.”

Although she did not identify him, Gonzalez referred to Watkinsville attorney Kevin Epps and explained why there have been so many hearings against her office for violating victims' rights. She said that in other counties, mistakes such as failing to notify victims of bond hearings or plea bargain hearings did not result in formal Marsy's Law hearings. Yalamanchili argued that while these errors were not intentional, the issue affected only the Western Judicial Circuit prosecutor's office due to a “complete and complete malfunction.”

When asked about the Georgia Supreme Court's ruling in favor of a plaintiff suing Gonzalez over access to public records, Gonzalez referred to them multiple times a day as “harassment requests,” some of which have nothing to do with her caseload, such as: B. The document search reveals any communications she may have had with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Although she again did not mention his name, many of these requests are made by or on behalf of Attorney Epps.

“Many of these were not serious at all,” Gonzalez said, adding that they were slowing down her office and depleting resources.

It was a unanimous decision that Gonzalez had a “misunderstanding of authority,” Yalamanchili explained.

“The Open Records Act was passed by the legislature,” he said. “When you receive requests, you must not unilaterally decide that you do not like this law and therefore will not follow it.”

During the debate, Gonzalez bristled at Bryant's interruption to repeat a question she hadn't fully answered.

Bryant had asked about conviction rates, and Gonzalez said she had “cleared” over 1,000 cases, explaining that many of them were plea hearings because “there aren't enough resources to take everything to trial.” “.

“How many cases have you successfully litigated?” Bryant pressed her.
“I’ll get there,” she assured, frustrated. “I tried six cases in seven weeks. I was successful in four of these six cases. I think this type of time pressure is quite successful.” She did not provide any information about the nature of these cases.

Bryant asked Yalamanchili how many cases he had prosecuted as an attorney and former ADA in the justice system.

Yalamanchili replied that he didn't keep a list, but there were “many dozens.”

“I have successfully prosecuted murder cases, armed robbery, rape and child molestation cases,” he said. “MS. Gonzalez did none of these things.”

In the front row, an audience member loudly protested Yalamanchili's use of the polite title “Mrs.” instead of “DA”.

When asked about staffing levels, Yalamanchili pointed out that in addition to the high turnover of 17 open attorney positions in the DA's office, only 11 are filled by people licensed to practice law in the state of Georgia. He added that Gonzalez employs several trainees who have not taken the bar exam.

“The people who have been hired have an incredibly low level of trial experience,” he said, noting that the prosecution has lost six of the last seven trials.

Yalamanchili said he began recruiting prosecutors – some of whom Gonzalez approached and they “didn't want to work for her.”

Gonzalez claimed that former prosecutor Ken Mauldin also had vacancies when he took office. The complicating factor now, she claimed, is that there is a statewide and even national shortage of prosecutors due to low pay. The starting salary for defense attorneys is higher, she said.

On the issue of truancy, Gonzalez said her refusal to prosecute truancy cases mirrors that of former Mauldin. She spoke passionately about not separating families and providing resources to youth in need.

“This is not about separating families,” Yalamanchili said, explaining that adjudication of truancy cases does not entail a prison sentence for the perpetrator.

“It is a treatment court modality, not a criminal court modality,” he said, explaining that the system is designed to connect families with resources and bring in social workers when a child is being mistreated, since truancy is an indicator of physical or sexual abuse can be in the household. “To ignore it, the DA’s office is abdicating a role it should be filling as the state’s elected representative

“Why do you have to engage the system to get services? “Why do we have to give a child a record?” asked Gonzalez. “Why can’t we just have more counselors in schools? More social workers in schools? I don't think there will be any evictions. It means saying no to something that shouldn't be my responsibility. We must stop passing these social ills onto the criminal justice system.”

Yalamanchili replied: “How can a child who is not in school have access to a social worker or counselor at school?”

An audience member loudly interjected, “Teachers talk to families; That’s how it works!”

In a press release after the debate, Gonzalez's campaign said it “witnessed audience members booing and giggling” at her comments about protecting the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people.

“When they groaned, she implied that Kalki's supporters were rolling back LGBTQ rights and wanted to lock up black and brown people,” said Cameron Jay Harrelson, a gay man who previously worked on Gonzalez's previous campaign but now works at Yalamanchili supports. “From my perspective, they said 'not true'…The chairman of the Athens GOP sat right behind me and said 'no,' when [Gonzalez] said they (those supporting her opponent) want to roll back LGBQ rights.”

Video of the debate was shot by retired journalism professor Lee Becker and will be posted this week on his blog oconeecountyobservations.org.

Due to space limitations, some questions from the debate are not covered in this story. These include topics such as drug court referrals, whether the prosecutor's position should be partisan or independent, what can be done to combat drug and gang activity, positions on prosecuting abortion cases, and how to handle shoplifting cases. Their answers, as well as both candidates' opening and closing statements, will be available on video at oconeecountyobservations.org.