Georgia lawmakers enacted landmark legislation in 2003 establishing a statewide public defender system to replace county-run programs found unable to provide adequate representation for poor people accused of crimes.

A main culprit of the old system was the use of contracts, where private lawyers were paid flat fees to handle indigent caseloads. Because the contract lawyers kept a private practice, they had an inherent incentive to spend as little time as possible on their indigent cases to devote more time to their paying clients.

The nascent public defender system initially did away with this practice, but contracts have crept back into the system. The development has spawned a lawsuit in Fulton County on behalf of indigent defendants and salaried defenders accused of crimes and salaried defenders who are about to lose their jobs. A ruling on that lawsuit is expected this week.

Contracts are not limited to Fulton County. Through June, the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council signed contracts with 29 lawyers in judicial circuits across the state that paid them, on average, little more than $300 a case, according to documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution through an Open Records Act request.

Contracts signed this month with four lawyers in Fulton County will pay per case, on average, $143 — almost what it costs for two tankfuls of gas for a 2008 Toyota Camry.

"It's a prescription for dreadful quality of representation," Atlanta lawyer Emmet Bondurant, former chairman of the defender council, testified last week during a hearing on the lawsuit before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Melvin Westmoreland.

Westmoreland is being asked to halt the council's plan to lay off four salaried defenders at the Metro Conflict Defender Office and replace them with four contract lawyers.

The council announced it would lay off the four salaried lawyers at the end of July because lawmakers slashed the council's statewide budget for conflict cases.

Under the council's cost-cutting plan, Fulton's contract attorneys would be paid $50,000 a year to handle an estimated 350 cases each.

Forensic accountant Ted Robertson testified Thursday that, after taxes, reasonable office expenses, inexpensive health insurance and a minimal retirement contribution, the contract would net the lawyers about $27,000 a year.

"It trivializes the right to counsel," co-counsel Stephen Bright told Westmoreland. "I want to make clear, your honor, we're not asking for a Cadillac. But we don't want to return to the horse-and-buggy age."

Devon Orland, a deputy state attorney general, told Westmoreland she did not know whether the new system would work. But the council is trying to be "fiscally responsible," she said.

"This is reality," she said. "That is there are so many state dollars to go around."

The layoffs are "unfortunate," but the council will monitor the situation closely and step in and address any problems that may arise, Orland said.

She asked Westmoreland to let the contract lawyers work their cases for 90 days and then decide whether the system is working.

Former DeKalb public defender Larry Schneider, who is overseeing contract lawyers for the defender council, agreed that having salaried, full-time defenders devoted only to their indigent caseloads is the ideal situation. "If I can convert these contracts to paid positions, I will," he said.

The four contract lawyers would handle Fulton County's less serious felony cases, such as those involving drug possession, theft, burglary, forgery and fraud. To keep these cases moving, the lawyers work busy nine-week calendars, in which they are in court most days. After one cycle ends, the lawyers pick up a new round of cases.

Elizabeth Markowitz, a supervisor at the Fulton County Public Defender's Office, said more lawyers are needed to handle this caseload. The four contract lawyers, she said, won't be able to earn any extra income with their private practices.

"There's not enough time, given the constraints, to do anything outside [of the required contract work]," she testified.

That was a problem in Muscogee County for Columbus lawyer Susan Henderson, who was given one of the council's contracts for the fiscal year that ended June 30. She did not renew her contract, which paid her $20,000 to handle 100 cases.

Henderson, a former prosecutor, said not having support staff or investigators to assist her made her work overwhelming as she also tried to keep up a civil practice. "It got way too time-consuming, and I found I could not be effective," she said Friday. "It started costing me money."

Henderson said she represented one defendant in a child-cruelty case that she took to trial and got a hung jury. When the case was over, Henderson figured, the contract paid her about $2 an hour for all the time she devoted to that case.

"It was laughable at the end of the day," she said.