His health is flagging. His finances are ruined. His reputation is besmirched. And so on Wednesday longtime Douglas County District Attorney David McDade announced, through his lawyer, that he is retiring as part of a “non-prosecution” agreement reached after a GBI investigation looking into alleged misuse of funds.

The announcement was made by attorney Drew Findling because McDade, 57, is virtually housebound because of a medical problem that almost cost him his legs.

McDade, a zealous prosecutor with a penchant for seeking the death penalty has represented the state’s prosecutors at the Georgia capitol and has survived allegations in the past, causing attorneys to jokingly call him the “Teflon D.A.” But this time, new allegations coupled with incapacitating health issues were too much, causing McDade to leave the office he has held since 1990.

In exchange for the resignation, the attorney general will not take to a grand jury any evidence the Georgia Bureau of Investigation collected against McDade concerning allegations that he misspent forfeiture money and misused vehicles owned by his office. The findings have not been released.

Findling said he doesn’t believe there was ever a criminal case to make, based on a review of checks, deposit slips and balance sheets conducted by an investigator his office hired.

Last year, McDade asked for a GBI investigation into his own office after TV station Fox-5 reported that he improperly used drug forfeiture money to finance a fleet of cars for his staff, including his office manager who frequently used her car for non-county business.

McDade agreed to pay the county $4,000 to cover disputed spending, Findling said, because it was easier than getting “into a long, protracted negotiation…. It’s the most unselfish decision.”

McDade has had health issues for years. He had a heart attack and a triple bypass in 2010 and another heart attack in 2012. He went into the hospital in December in preparation for back surgery when doctors discovered blood clots in his legs. At one point, doctors thought they would have to amputate one or both his legs below the knee, Findling said. He is at home but he still has to have the wounds drained.

McDade has not returned to the office since December.

McDade, who started in the office as an assistant D.A. 32 years ago, used moral outrage to drive his prosecutions and to win over juries in a law-and-order jurisdiction. In 1992, he got the death penalty against a man for beating his girlfriend’s daughter to death and used the trial to point out shortcomings in the social services agency that failed to protect the child.

He also once pushed hard in the beating death of a homeless man, saying that all victims are equal.

McDade’s success in obtaining death-penalty verdicts borders on legendary. Each time he stood before juries and asked them to impose a death sentence, they did so. In a 2008 TV interview, McDade said Douglas County juries had imposed more than 15 straight death sentences.

Later that year, the consecutive streak ended when a jury gave a double murderer a life-without-parole sentence. McDade did not himself try that case.

“I think he relished in the death penalty,” said defense lawyer Michael Hauptman, who tried many cases against McDade. “In his office he had photos of every defendant he had put on death row. That was on the morbid side. A lot of people thought he was vindictive. I think he really gave a voice to victims’ pain.”

Attorneys have complained McDade can be a bully and unbending in negotiations.

In 2007, McDade garnered national attention in the case of Genarlow Wilson, who had begun serving a 10-year sentence for having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17. The case, prosecuted by McDade’s office, ultimately prompted Georgia to change the law making a similar act a misdemeanor instead of a felony. Wilson served 32 months before the Georgia Supreme Court ordered his release, calling his sentence “cruel and unusual punishment.”

And McDade’s office was relentless in the prosecutions of four men charged with beating to death 18-year-old Bobby Tillman outside a party in 2010. Three of the four men were sent to prison for life without the possibility of parole. One man, who pleaded guilty, has a shot one day of being released.

Hauptman said “for as long as I remember, people have always had problems with David but I never had a problem with his honesty.”

In 2009, McDade was nominated to fill a vacancy on the Georgia Supreme Court. But the governor’s Judicial Nominating Commission did not put him on its short list of recommendations after reviewing a sex harassment case filed against him in 1995.

The case was filed by six former female employees in his office. Court records portrayed a bawdy atmosphere in which the some of the plaintiffs dressed up as prostitutes and some gave McDade a sexually charged photo album and an ice sculpture of breasts. These same women accused McDade, whom they called “the volcano,” of being an overbearing boss who dropped sexually explicit barbs to demean and embarrass them.

But the case never mad it to a jury. The federal appeals court dismissed the suit before trial, although the judges wrote, "The Constitution does not prohibit all boorish or rude behavior."

McDade also ran into financial problems after getting involved in a failed local bank taken over by regulators in 2010, a move that caused him to file for bankruptcy a year later.

Longtime Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter called McDade a “true believer” in his prosecutions and a public servant who helped make “tremendous strides in the legislature” because of his advocacy. He said McDade helped push legislation that allowed prosecutors to have as many juror strikes as defense teams and allowed victim-impact statements be made by videotape.

Lester Tate, former president of the state bar association, said McDade has a “take-no-hostages legacy. There was little compromise and intense pursuit of what he thought what was wrong.

“He’s known for pursuing cases to the fullest extent of the law,” Tate said. “It’s ironic he won’t be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”