Incumbent Democratic District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez and Kalki Yalamanchili, challenging her on the Nov. 5 ballot as an Independent, agree that there have been problems in the District Attorney Office in the last four years.
They disagree to some extent on the severity of the problems, and they disagree on the causes. They disagree most strongly on the solutions.
Gonzalez, in her closing comments in a candidate forum on Tuesday night, said “We need to stick the course because anything worth doing needs time, needs resources, needs people to champion it.”
“But if you want to go back to tough on crime, or you want to go back to punishment is the only way that we can deal with it, then my opponent is the person for you,” she said.
“It is absolutely a false choice to say that you have to choose between an office that can competently and effectively prosecute serious violent felony cases and an office that has the training and experience and compassion to connect people ...with the resources they need,” Yalamanchili responded, also in his closing comments.
“Just because my opponent can't do it doesn't mean that it's not possible,” he added.
Forum Format
The forum, held at Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Services Building on King Avenue in Athens, was moderated by WGAU radio personality Tim Bryant. It followed a forum on Oct. 15 at Hill Chapel Baptist Church in Athens-Clarke County.
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| Bryant 10/22/2024 |
Athens Classic Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to holding such events, sponsored the program on Tuesday.
The Western Judicial Circuit consists of Oconee and Clarke counties.
Bryant asked a range of questions, many of which, he said, had been sent or suggested to him in advance of the forum.
Bryant said he would serve both as time keeper and moderator, but he also said he wouldn’t really keep time.
He asked the candidates to keep their answers short and said he would stop candidates when he felt they had spoken long enough in response to a question.
About 100 people attended the forum, and it was clear as the evening progressed that the crowd included supporters of both Gonzalez and supporters of Yalamanchili.
Bryant allowed for and even encouraged public response, and some of the answers the candidates provided produced applause, and some produced something approaching heckling.
Perhaps the most heated exchange of the evening came when Bryant asked both candidates about violations by the District Attorney Office of Marsy’s Law, designed to protect the rights of victims of crime.
Staffing
Bryant asked Yalamanchili and then Gonzalez to give opening comments before he began with his questioning.
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| Yalamanchili 10/22/2024 |
Twenty-five minutes into the 90-minute session he asked about staffing of the District Attorney Office, which Gonzalez has said from the beginning of her term has been a problem.
Bryant told Yalamanchili that he had made staffing “a cornerstone of your campaign. Talk about what you see as these staffing issues.”
“My understanding right now is that, of the 17 attorney positions that are available in the office only 11 are filled by people who are actually licensed to practice law in the state of Georgia,” Yalamanchili said.
“So, I mean, there's some people who haven't passed the bar exam that they created a position called apprentice assistant district attorney for, and have kept them on staff filling an attorney role even though they don't meet the minimum statutory qualification to work at a District Attorney's Office,” he said.
“Now the problem is the people that have been hired have an incredibly low level of actual litigation experience,” Yalamanchili said, “And that's why in the last seven trials that the DA's office has had, they've lost six of them.”
“In four of those cases, they didn't even get to the point where the jury was deliberating on the case, which is such a low bar to clear,” he said.
“They didn't present enough evidence in order to even get the case to a jury in three of those cases,” he continued.
Gonzalez Responds On Staffing
Gonzalez responded by saying that when she was at a District Attorney Association of Georgia meeting recently “the question was asked, how many of you have shortages in your office?”
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| Gonzalez 10/22/2024 |
“Every single district attorney raised their hand,” she said. “This is not a Deborah issue. This is not even the state of Georgia issue. This is a national issue of prosecutor shortages,” she said.
“One of the reasons is because our pay is so low,” she said. “Defense attorneys start at $71,000 a year. A state prosecutor starts at $58,000.”
“So we are actually in the legislature trying to get that up so that they are par,” she said.
Gonzalez said she also had reorganized her office.
“This is also an office that never had paralegals,” she said, “that never had legal assistance, that never had any administrative help at all.”
“So again, if we want a different office and we want a different approach, we're going to try a different structure,” she said. “And that is what we did at a time where we had a shortage.”
“We looked at how can we be more creative, what can we do differently to include people?” she said. “And that meant bringing in people who are not doing things that are required of a licensed attorney.”
Marsey’s Law
Nearly 45 minutes into the forum, Bryant asked Gonzalez to respond to a question about the Georgia Crime Victim’s Bill of Rights, also known as Marsy’s Law. The exchange lasted for more than 12 minutes.
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| Gonzalez 10/22/2024 |
“A judge has found you, Deborah Gonzalez, in violation of the victim rights bill, Marcy's Law, as it is called, it's four or five times, I'm not sure which. I don't, I'm genuinely not sure which, four or five times in two years,” Bryant said. “Speak to that.”
“First of all, they didn't find me. They found my office,” Gonzalez responded. “But one thing that I will say on this is we have no idea what happened before I walked into my office.”
“We have no idea what was going on with my predecessor in terms of victim's rights and victim services,” she said.
“We spend every day talking and working with victims,” Gonzalez continued. “Victims who are young victims, who are older victims of crimes that have happened in the last few months. Victims of crimes that have happened in previous years.”
“There's some victims who do not want to be notified,” She said. “They don't want to know about their cases because it's so traumatic for them. And so we respect that if that's what they want to do.”
Of the Marsey’s Law violations, Gonzalez said, “Each of those is an experience to learn to be better not to make it happen again.”
“I also advocate that people in my office who may have made a mistake just don't get thrown out by that first mistake that they made,” she said.
“They learn how they can make amends, how to make it better, that they go to training and that they come back and that they do better and that they can teach others as well,” she said.
Yalamanchili Responds
“I want to talk about this in specific ways because, you know, these aren't numbers,” Yalamanchili said. “These are human beings who are victims of crimes and denied justice in their case.”
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| Yalamanchili 10/22/2024 |
“One of these violations is a woman whose husband was killed by a drunk driver who the District Attorney's Office reduced that charge from vehicular homicide to a misdemeanor,” he said. “And they did not contact her in order to inform her that that plea was going to be entered until the morning it was going to be entered.”
“The District Attorney's defense in that case was that because they were common law married, that she wasn't really his wife and she wasn't entitled to notice under the statute.”
“Another one that occurred was a child who was being raped by her father, who was willing to step forward and testify at trial,” Yalamanchili said. “Jury selection I believe was about to begin, at which point the District Attorney's Office dismissed the case saying that there wasn't enough evidence for guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
“And they did it without really consulting with the victim or the victim's family, which led to another Marsy's law violation,” he said.
“These cases deserve the highest level of service that we can bring to bear,” Yalamanchili said, “and there are no excuses for that.”
“My understanding is that in the state of Georgia,” Yalamanchili said, “our current District Attorney's Office has the only five violations (of Marsy’s Law) that have ever been ordered as having been found by a judge.”
Video
The video below is of the entire forum held on Tuesday at the auditorium of the Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Services Building, 242 King Avenue in Athens.
The questions and responses above make up only a small part of the forum.
I selected them and provided detailed responses from the candidates because I believe they played a central role in the forum and have been central to the campaign.
Bryant asked the candidates about a violation of open records law by the District Attorney at 8:11 in the video.
He asked about prosecution of cases stemming from the state’s anti-abortion law at 11:12.
Bryant asked about staffing at 24:26 in the video.
He asked about prosecution of truancy at 34:11.
Bryant asked about Marsy’s Law at 42:16 in the video.
He asked about prosecution of the Laken Riley murder case at 1:18:54 in the video.
Closing comments begin at 1:24:13.
1 comment:
Gonzalez is a danger to Athens and Oconee. Vote Kalki!
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