Four Georgia County District Attorneys are filing a lawsuit challenging Senate Bill 89, a measure passed in May by GOP Gov. Brian Kemp and state Republican lawmakers to form an independent commission to review and remove County prosecutors and District Attorneys for "misconduct".
Four district attorneys filed a legal challenge to block a Georgia law championed by Gov. Brian Kemp that gives the state new powers to punish local prosecutors who don’t enforce tough-on-crime crackdowns.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday challenges one of Kemp’s signature achievements this year — a Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission to sanction “rogue prosecutors” accused of neglecting their duties.
The opponents of the law, which took effect in July, say it’s a power grab that threatens the independence of the judiciary, infringes on free speech rights and forces prosecutors to hide their stances from voters.
They framed the urgent GOP drive for the measure as backlash against district attorneys who promised not to charge low-level drug offenders, enforce the state’s anti-abortion law or take “punitive approaches” to criminal justice.
“From the moment they started drafting this legislation it was clear to me they had crossed constitutional lines,” DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston said in an interview.
“It’s of vital importance for district attorneys to have both independence and discretion,” Boston said. “This commission attacks our abilities as the ministers of justice to do that.”
Boston is among four district attorneys who brought the lawsuit, which was filed in Fulton County Superior Court. The others are Jonathan Adams, the top prosecutor in Butts, Lamar and Monroe counties; Cobb County District Attorney Flynn Broady; and Augusta District Attorney Jared Williams.
While the legislation passed along party lines — the sole Democrat to vote for the law has since switched to the GOP — the complaint shows the new commission remains divisive in the legal community. Adams is among several Republican prosecutors who have raised concerns about the law.
It’s one of a spate of measures Republicans adopted after a midterm campaign that focused on public safety, a theme Kemp reinforced when he declared that “far-left prosecutors are making our communities less safe” as he signed the law in May.
“Georgians in every community deserve to be safe,” Kemp, flanked by law enforcement officers, said at the ceremony. “Brave men and women in uniform are doing their part. District attorneys and prosecutors need to do theirs as well.”
It's bad enough that Kemp and Georgia Republicans are directly interfering in legal cases brought in the state, but the real alarm bells should be ringing over the one DA not mentioned in the lawsuit or the article: the DA for the most populous county in Georgia, Fulton County DA Fani Willis.
You know, the one currently conducting a grand jury investigation into Donald Trump's 2020 election fraud, involving several members of the Georgia GOP leadership, and possibly even Kemp himself.
Understand that I expect this "independent commission" will be used against Willis, with intent of removing her from office for bringing any charges against Trump in the state.
So yes, seeing this coming from a Georgia country mile away, her fellow DAs, some Republican, some Democratic, brought a lawsuit.
We'll see where all this goes, but keep this in the back of your mind if/when Willis brings charges as many observers expect.
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