Four Georgia district attorneys filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging the constitutionality of controversial legislation the General Assembly passed this year creating an oversight board for local prosecutors.
Senate Bill 92 cleared the Republican-controlled legislature in March largely along party lines.
The bill created the eight-member Prosecuting Attorneys Oversight Commission to investigate complaints lodged against prosecutors and hold hearings. The commission will have the power to discipline or remove prosecutors on a variety of grounds including mental or physical incapacity, willful misconduct or failure to perform the duties of the office, conviction of a crime of moral turpitude, or conduct that brings the office into disrepute.
During the debate over the measure, Republican lawmakers complained that prosecutors in Georgia cities led by Democrats have been reluctant to prosecute certain crimes, notably during the civil unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis by a white police officer in 2020.
“We’re sending the message that we won’t forfeit public safety for prosecutors who let criminals off the hook,” Republican Gov. Brian Kemp said when he signed the bill in May. “They’re tired of having to chase
the same criminals over and over again … just to see them released by district attorneys either unwilling or unable to do their jobs!”
The lawsuit, filed in Fulton County Superior Court, argues the legislation curtails the power of locally elected prosecutors and usurps the will of voters.
“SB 92 is not just an assault on prosecutors, it is an assault on our democracy,” DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston said Wednesday. “This law is a direct threat to every Georgian who exercises their right to vote – their right to choose the person they think best represents their values in the courtroom.”
Boston was joined in the suit by Cobb District Attorney Flynn Broady, Augusta D.A. Jared Williams, and Jonathan Adams, district attorney for the Towaliga Judicial Circuit serving Butts, Lamar, and Monroe counties.
The prosecutors are represented by Public Rights Project, a national nonprofit that works with local governments on civil rights issues.
“Prosecutors around the country are under attack for trying to represent the will of the voters and implement reforms that make our criminal justice system more fair,” said Josh Rosenthal, the organization’s legal director. “Georgia is ground zero in that fight.”
The suit seeks the court to invalidate the legislation or at least stop the new oversight commission from taking up any complaints or disciplining any local prosecutors.
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