DeKalb County's Superior Court judges have issued a rare reply to a Georgia Supreme Court decision, disputing a claim that they struck a deal with county public defenders to limit appeals.

The high court last week unanimously overturned the 2001 drug conviction of Michael Edwards, who argued his public defenders failed to press an appeal of the racial composition of DeKalb's jury pool because of a deal with the judges. The jury that convicted Edwards was 58 percent white.

The 2000 census showed DeKalb County had switched from a white majority to a 54 percent black majority during the 1990s.

The Supreme Court's ruling said DeKalb judges agreed in mid-2001 to speed up changes to the jury system based on those changes, "but only if the public defender's office would agree not to pursue challenges to the racial compositions of ... jury arrays in Edwards' case and other 'past' cases."

That prompted an "official statement" from the eight current DeKalb Superior Court judges who also were serving in 2001. In the statement, the judges "unequivocally deny the occurrence of any discussion, negotiation or agreement ... which would have foreclosed any defendant's right to challenge the jury array in any case at any time as has been suggested by the Georgia Supreme Court decision."

The statement said the court adopted the new racial data as soon as it received complete figures.

Although Edwards has been raising the issue on appeal for more than five years, a review of records at the Supreme Court shows no one ever produced testimony from a DeKalb judge or from anyone who said they actually negotiated a deal about the racial composition of juries.

But two lawyers from the public defender's office who represented Edwards testified in a February 2003 hearing that they understood from unidentified superiors that they should not raise the jury issue on appeal.

Rather than dispute the existence of the deal, lawyers for the state cited other testimony by one of the public defenders.

She said she had explained the deal to Edwards and he chose not to seek an outside lawyer who could appeal the jury issue.

Larry Schneider, DeKalb's longtime chief public defender now on leave, said Monday he recalled that a senior lawyer in his office "worked out" an understanding with the Superior Court judges that they would update the jury pool system with the new census numbers as rapidly as possible, and, meanwhile, the public defender's office would not insist on hearings on the issue in every felony case.

But Schneider said the issue was raised without a full hearing in many cases, including Edwards' case. That meant the issue could be used on appeal, Schneider said.

"I would not have told them not to raise it on appeal," he said.