Judge denies district attorney's attempt to block Georgia prosecutor disciplinary commission

A Georgia judge has denied an attempt by three district attorneys to block a commission created to discipline and remove state prosecutors.

Gov. Brian Kemp signed Senate Bill 92 into law in 2023. The bill would establish the Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission, consisting of eight members that would include six current or former prosecutors and two other lawyers.

The commission oversees DAs and solicitors general — elected prosecutors who handle lower-level crimes in some counties. It also mandates that a prosecutor must consider every case for which probable cause exists and can't exclude categories of cases from prosecution.

After Kemp signed the law, a challenge was filed by Sherry Boston, the DeKalb County district attorney; Jared Williams of Augusta and neighboring Burke County; and Jonathan Adams of Butts, Lamar and Monroe counties south of Atlanta. Adams is a Republican; the others are Democrats. The three prosecutors argued that the commission's oversight violated parts of Georgia's Constitution and that state lawmakers were improperly intruding on the judicial branch by regulating prosecutors.

In her ruling on Wednesday, Judge Paige Reese Whitaker said that the district attorneys had not identified any part of the Constitution that is violated by the law.

"The Act creates no separation of powers problem between the Commission and the district attorneys because both are organs of the executive branch, and district attorneys exercise only executive power," Whitaker wrote.

Whitaker also found that, while the district attorneys expressed their concerns about possible discipline, no such discipline has happened yet, which means that they "failed to state a cause for declaratory relief."

"No Commission action against either Plaintiff is pending, and the discipline they fear—without reason in the Court's analysis—remains entirely hypothetical, speculative, and contingent upon the happening of some future event," Whitaker said.

With those conclusions, the judge denied the district attorneys' request, choosing to rule in favor of the state.

"We commend Judge Whitaker's strong decision, and we're proud to have defended the PAQC's efforts," Attorney General Chris Carr said in a statement. "When an elected prosecutor fails to do their job, crime goes up and victims are denied justice. With this win, we have made clear that DAs who choose to ignore the law will not be immune from accountability."

This is a separate lawsuit from the other that Boston filed in June over another recently-passed Georgia law. That one, concerning making races for district attorney, and other county offices nonpartisan in five metro Atlanta counties, is still pending.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.