A Fulton County judge rejected an effort to pause the work of the new state commission tasked with investigating and disciplining local prosecutors, ruling there was no “vital necessity” for her to issue a temporary injunction as she considers an underlying legal challenge.
Superior Court Judge Paige Reese Whitaker denied a push from a bipartisan trio of district attorneys who requested a directive temporarily prohibiting the Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission from taking action against prosecutors accused of misconduct as they pursued their lawsuit. Whitaker had rejected a similar push in September 2023.
“As was the case in plaintiffs’ previous challenge to the commission, plaintiffs have again failed to show an injury that is concrete, particularized, actual and imminent,” Whitaker wrote in a 17-page order issued late Tuesday.
The effort was spearheaded by two Democratic DAs, DeKalb County’s Sherry Boston and Augusta’s Jared Williams, and Republican Jonathan Adams, who is the top prosecutor in Butts, Lamar and Monroe counties. The group has challenged the law governing the commission and sought to stop its work, arguing the panel threatens the independence of the judiciary, infringes on free speech rights and forces prosecutors to hide their stances from voters.
Whitaker noted that the commission has yet to investigate or sanction any prosecutors, including the three DAs who brought the complaint. Because of that, the plaintiffs’ alleged injuries remain “conjectural or hypothetical” and not based on a current set of facts, she said.
“Plaintiffs’ alleged injuries are not actual or imminent,” she wrote. “They are not based on any act of the commission but instead some unmaterialized and unspecified future harm.
In a statement, Boston said she was disappointed with Whitaker’s decision because “we believe the commission can cause real harm to our justice system if left unchecked while our legal challenge is heard.”
“A local prosecutor’s discretion is crucial to her ability to protect her community. It must be preserved,” she said. “We will always stand against efforts to impede the work of experienced, locally elected law enforcement officials who are simply trying to serve their constituents.”
A Boston spokeswoman said that under state law, the DAs have the ability to appeal the order, but the plaintiffs have not yet made a decision yet on whether to pursue it.
Whitaker has yet to rule on the merits of the underlying case.
A pair of Republicans in the state Senate called on the DAs to drop their suit.
“To continue this challenge is an injustice to crime victims in our communities as well as to Georgia taxpayers having to shoulder the expense of this frivolous case,” said Sen. John F. Kennedy, R-Macon. “This is the second time these plaintiff-prosecutors have failed in court to block the law. Maybe it’s time to realize that they have a losing argument.”
The Republican-backed commission was created in 2023 to punish “rogue prosecutors” from both parties. Democrats raised concerns that it would effectively be used to sanction Fulton DA Fani Willis for her felony case against former President Donald Trump.
After the General Assembly greenlit the panel, a group of Senate Republican officials quickly filed a formal complaint against Willis, arguing she “improperly cherry-picked cases” to further her own agenda.
Willis has cast the law as racist and a GOP response to Black Democrats being elected to top prosecutorial positions in recent years, a claim that’s been vehemently denied by the statute’s Republican backers.
GOP legislators ironed out the law governing the council earlier this year after the Georgia Supreme Court ruled it had “grave doubts” about whether it had authority to approve the panel’s rules and regulations.
The commission is expected to accelerate its work in the months ahead.
It recently hired former Savannah-area prosecutor Ian Heap as its executive director. Heap is slated to lead investigations into complaints of misconduct and establish the organization’s procedures and operations, the commission said in a recent press release. Its five-member investigative panel said it has “kept all complaints referred to it so far and will provide these complaints to the new executive director to be reviewed and handled according to the law and the commission’s rules and code of conduct.”
Whitaker said issuing an injunction now, as the prosecutors had asked for, would “cause immediate and actual harm to the State,” since it’s the latter’s job to enforce statutes passed by the legislative branch. She said the state Constitution grants the General Assembly the authority to pass laws imposing duties on DAs and create a process to discipline and remove prosecutors.
Staff writer Greg Bluestein contributed to this report.
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