Dozens of Fulton County murder suspects will remain in jail — at least for now — following a last-minute push by the district attorney’s office to get them indicted ahead of Tuesday night’s deadline.
DA Fani Willis said her team of prosecutors worked around the clock to indict suspects charged with violent crimes before Tuesday, when the last of multiple bond extensions related to the COVID-19 pandemic expired.
After a person is arrested, prosecutors have 90 days to obtain an indictment, a requirement for the case to proceed. If prosecutors can’t meet the deadline, the law requires judges to grant bond. That deadline was extended repeatedly during the pandemic through a declared state of emergency in the courts. But the latest extension in Fulton County lapsed this week.
With a backlog of thousands of cases and a spike in violent crime, Willis said her team faced an uphill battle. Fulton County prosecutors went an entire year without indicting any cases, she said. In recent weeks, prosecutors have been running two grand juries simultaneously — for the first time in county history — to get people indicted by the deadline.
Tuesday was a long day for those selected for grand jury duty. Prosecutors indicted 66 cases, and at least a third of those were homicides, according to Willis.
Flanked by a team of more than three dozen prosecutors and investigators Wednesday morning, Willis said her office managed to avoid “one of the most severe crises” in the county’s history.
“Today, I am happy to announce not one individual in Fulton County will be released charged with the crime of homicide because a lawyer or an investigator failed to work up the case and failed to get it indicted in time,” Willis said, adding that suspects facing sexual offenses and those with “the most vile criminal histories” will also remain behind bars for now.
“But make no mistake about it,” she continued. “Our work is just beginning.”
According to Willis, there are still between 40 and 50 unindicted murder suspects in the Fulton County Jail. She also said there are another 200-plus who are out on bond, many of whom “long predate my administration.”
County staff members estimate it will cost $75 million and years of additional court sessions to solve Fulton’s backlog of more than 11,000 unindicted criminal cases.
Willis, who took office in January, recently received $5 million in extra funding from county commissioners to hire new employees to help tackle the caseload. She has more than 250 staff members on the payroll now, but expects that number to increase to 325 as she hires additional prosecutors in the coming months.
Willis has repeatedly blamed her predecessor, Paul Howard, for leaving her administration with a backlog of more than 12,000 unindicted cases. Of those, more than 7,000 were from the pandemic months, and more than 4,000 were from even earlier, she has said, calling it “a historic backlog due to mismanagement.”
Since March, when grand juries resumed, Willis said her team has indicted 193 murder suspects. She expects that number will increase to more than 300 by the end of the year. By comparison, she said, 156 murder cases were indicted in 2019.
The additional staff, coupled with prosecutors convening grand juries four days a week instead of two, will increase the number of indictments in Fulton County to about 200 per week, Willis told reporters.
“We are months out from that at this point, but that is the push,” she said. “That is the only way we can catch up.”
Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC
Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC
Homicides surged across the state and nation last year amid a rise in violent crime. In Atlanta, police investigated 157 slayings in 2020, up from 99 in 2019 and the most in more than two decades. There have been at least 121 more killings across the city since the start of this year.
Crime has become the central issue in November’s mayoral race and is the driving force behind the recent movement to have Buckhead split off from Atlanta and form its own city.
Willis said there’s no denying that crime is on the rise and feels “all of us are in a little bit of danger.”
“We need to be very vigilant in the way that we move,” she said. “There is something ugly going on in society, but what we were facing is some very, very dangerous individuals being released.”
Willis said she doesn’t get the chance to meet the families of every Fulton County homicide victim, but does meet with many of them.
“They’re broken,” she said. “I listen to horrible stories. I met with a mother last week (whose) son was killed a week before graduation. And she buried him in his cap and gown.”
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