Federal authorities have expressed interest in a class-action lawsuit in Georgia, where plaintiffs said children accused of committing crimes are being denied access to sufficient legal counsel.
In Cordele, Ga., a city of roughly 21,000 that advertises itself as the “watermelon capital of the world,” juvenile and poor defendants routinely have no representation in court, or get processed through the court system in “assembly-line fashion,” according to the original court complaint filed in January 2014.
The Cordele Judicial Circuit had three full-time public defenders to handle cases in four superior courts and four juvenile courts. In 2012, the circuit handled 681 juvenile delinquency cases, but the public defender’s office reported handling only 52 of them, according to the complaint. The office’s total caseload that year was 1,384.
Because the office is so understaffed, children defendants are often left without proper legal representation.
