Imagine that your newborn dies suddenly within 12 hours of being brought home from the hospital. She has no apparent external injuries, but a state-employed medical doctor performs a 90-minute autopsy, during which she ignores many of the hospital records, and concludes that the only possible cause of death was that you intentionally bludgeoned your baby.

Based on that opinion, the state indicts you for murder. (The minimum punishment for which in Georgia is life imprisonment.) Your lawyer went to law school, not medical school, and would not, without help, know how to question the state-employed doctor or show that the medical records that the doctor ignored would demonstrate that your little one died from a birth defect. Your lawyer's inability to challenge the State's forensic medical testimony means that in addition to losing your child, you are also losing your own life to the system.

This isn't a hypothetical. This is based on real cases litigated in the public defender system.

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Forensic testimony is seemingly some of the strongest evidence brought forth by either party in a courtroom. The problem is, most attorneys, judges, and jurors do not understand the science behind it.

Since June 2018, the Georgia Public Defender Counsel has provided a one-person Forensic Science Division to help prepare attorneys to litigate these issues across the State of Georgia. Colin Bellair, the Chief Counsel of the Forensic Science Division (and its only employee) has spent countless hours creating a powerhouse database of resources for the GPDC staff intranet. This includes:

• A directory of experts to make it easier for public defenders to find experts by subject matter. This often saves costs because the experts have worked with the agency before and are willing to quote reduced rates.
• A document library which includes sample motions and transcripts, as well as crime lab standard operating procedures. This helps public defenders save time by not drafting motions from scratch, or having to contact multiple law enforcement agencies to obtain commonly used documents.

Mr. Bellair has also personally

• provided litigation support to countless public defenders (helped draft complex motions, design direct and cross-examinations, etc.) and
• organized a DNA workshop which trained about 130 lawyers and 90 public defenders from across the state (which actually brought in $4,500 in revenue).

The Fiscal Year 2021 bill requires GPDC to make $400,000 in operational cuts (which means the money can't come from direct representation). The Forensic Science Division accounts for about a quarter of that.

Although GPDC was spared many of the huge cuts that other state agencies will have to make, this $400,000 cut unintentionally undermines the agency's ability to operate effectively. Because the agency has already reduced its budget to skin and bones, sadly, this means that it must eliminate positions to meet what would otherwise (or in other agencies) seem to be appreciated minor cuts.

For GPDC, this means that it is forced to eliminate the sole position that assists all of its 600 public defenders statewide with their forensic science issues.

The Forensic Science Division has unquestionably attained better results for GPDC's clients, all of whom are poor, most of whom are people of color, and some of whom are otherwise vulnerable. Because the GPDC Forensic Science Division meets an otherwise unmet need for public defenders across the state, the undersigned are asking Governor Brian Kemp to veto line 3624 of the proposed budget and restore the funding for the Forensic Science Division.