The Indigent Defense Council and a commission appointed by the state Supreme Court are among those studying whether the state provides adequate funding and whether indigent defense attorneys have enough time to adequately represent their clients, Shapiro said. Dougherty County's gap in prosecution and defense funding is not as wide as the state overall. David Perry, a former Tift County District attorney and a former indigent defense attorney in Dougherty County, said that he was so busy as an indigent defense attorney here that he had to hire another attorney to keep up. Perry, who withdrew from the contract system almost two years ago, said the workload was too much for the amount of money he earned. Right now we suffer from the extreme variation in the counties' ability to pay.
Some counties have a much bigger tax base and are able to do much more.
In Georgia, three indigent defense systems are in use. The appointed panel system used in 79 counties requires a judge to appoint counsel from a panel of qualified attorneys. The contract system used in Dougherty and 58 other counties relies on a group of private attorneys paid to handle indigent clients. The public defender system used in 21 counties hires a public defender and sometimes a staff of assistant public defenders to represent indigents. A committee for the State Bar of Georgia has recommended operating all Georgia counties under the the same public defender system.