House Panel Tightening Screws On Judge Fuller In Nichols Case

(12/18/07) The special House committee appointed to investigate the costs authorized by the judge in the Brian Nichols case has tightened the screws on the jurist, admonishing him for his response to its request to provide details of why defense costs he has authorized are so high.

In a letter sent Monday, the panel also insisted that Georgia taxpayers are entitled to know if the judge’s approval “of the excessive expenditure of public funds” for defense attorneys “is being used to indirectly subvert the ends of justice.”

You may recall that the committee last week asked Senior Judge Hinton Fuller for details of defense expenditures he has approved. The information currently is under seal, a step he said he took to ensure a fair trial by not exposing the defense strategy to prosecutors.

Fuller replied to that letter with a court order for both defense and prosecution lawyers in the case to offer their opinions on what should be disclosed, as well as whether the prosecution should also be compelled to disclose what it is spending.

The committee told Fuller in a sternly-worded letter Monday that’s not what it wanted and said it hopes he won’t find in that “an excuse to obfuscate.”

It doesn’t want the DA’s budget, the committee said, because that is, or will be, public record.

“Unlike the District Attorney, counsel for the defense was appointed by the Court and it is the Court, not the District Attorney, who has been entrusted with the duty to approve the disbursement of public funds for the provision of an adequate defense. The Court’s duty to ensure effective assistance of counsel is not conditioned upon the funding of the District Attorney any more than it is conditioned upon or relative to the funding of the Superior Courts. Although the Court has a duty to protect the lawyer-client privilege, those duties do not prevent any accountability for the use of public funds,” members of the committee wrote.

“It is the duty of the legislature to demand an accounting for the expenditure of public funds. Because you have authorized payment of money that is disproportionate to payments in similar cases and have placed the records of payment under seal, we must ask for this information in order to determine the most appropriate response,” the letter continues.

Some other key lines from Monday’s letter:

“The people of Georgia are entitled to know if the Court’s approval of the excessive expenditure of public funds is being used to indirectly subvert the ends of justice.”

“We hope that after you have received input from counsel you will not use any response they may give as an excuse to obfuscate our request that you turn over the expressed records for which we have asked.”

The text of the letter can be found here.