Senate Bill 92, signed by Governor Brian Kemp on Friday, adds to the GOP’s nationwide crackdown against reform-minded prosecutors who have adopted such “declination” policies. Texas Republicans are in the process of passing a bill meant to force the hand of district attorneys who have ruled out enforcing abortion bans. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis removed Tampa’s prosecutor from office in August, pointing to statements he’d made about protecting abortion. Similar moves are underway in other states.

The bill sets up a new board with the authority to oust DAs who don’t fulfill their duties. It also redefines the duties of DAs—and so what counts as grounds for removal—to specify that they cannot “categorically” refuse to prosecute offenses that they are “by law required to prosecute.”

Criminal justice reformers have long aimed for increased oversight over DAs, frustrated that prosecutors routinely violate ethics and defendants’ rights with little consequence. In the wake of the shooting of Armaud Arbery and of allegations that a local DA blocked investigations into his death in 2020, Georgia Democrats proposed a bill that would have created a similar state disciplinary board. But their bill did not contain a mandate that DAs file charges based on all existing laws. Republicans added that language when they repurposed the proposal this year, motivated in part by the aftermath of Dobbs, and Democratic lawmakers opposed the resulting bill. 

One of Republicans’ prime target is Deborah Gonzalez, the Democratic DA of Athens-Clarke and Oconee counties. Gonzalez won on a progressive platform in 2020 and quickly rolled out reforms that included ending prosecutions over marijuana possession, a charge that has been used in Athens to target Black residents. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in June, Gonzalez joined other Georgia DAs in saying she would not prosecute abortion. 

Republicans have signaled that they want their new state board to kick Gonzalez out of her elected office over cases she is not charging. “What do we do about these prosecutors who won’t prosecute?” asked Ed Setzler, a GOP lawmaker from Acworth, two hours west of Athens.

Bolts talked to Gonzalez about SB 92 after the bill passed the legislature. She denounced it as antidemocratic and said her critics want to override an election because they dislike its outcome. She also made the case that it’s appropriate for DAs to not prosecute certain cases—including abortion. In fact, she said, this approach can be a boon for public safety. 

“Prosecutorial discretion has not been a problem for generations,” she said, “but because you have a new class of reform-minded prosecutors coming into power who can now use that same discretion to hold people accountable but in a fair and just way, now it’s a problem.”.

Gonzalez has survived other efforts to reduce her power. When she declared her candidacy, Kemp tried to altogether cancel the local DA race, part of a pattern of election cancellations in Georgia, but the state supreme court stepped in to restore the election, which Gonzalez won in a December 2020 runoff. Republicans then proposed a bill to cut her circuit in two. Gonzalez now also faces a lawsuit, filed by a business owner in Athens, that alleges that she is not doing her job and is refusing to prosecute certain offenses like drug cases.

Besides SB 92, Georgia Republicans proposed other bills this year that target prosecutors. One bill would have lowered the number of signatures people have to collect to force a recall election against a DA from 30 to 2 percent of registered voters; the bill died in the state House when the session ended. 

Fueling this trend in Georgia is Republican anger toward Fulton County DA Fani Willis, who is investigating former President Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Willis, who is Black, has denounced the GOP bills as a “dangerous” effort to overturn a series of wins by people of color in the state’s 2020 prosecutor races—a criticism that Gonzalez also echoed in her interview with Bolts.

What is your reaction to SB 92 and the new board it sets up?

This is not an oversight bill. It’s an overstep on the part of the legislature to undermine the voice and vote of the people who elected us as DAs based on our approach and what they felt they wanted, in terms of the way that justice should be done in their community. This just takes all of that away. 

That happens whenever there’s a shift in power, when people who have traditionally been oppressed are now in those positions because that’s what the community wanted. Those who had always stood by the status quo are not happy and are resisting the change. 

When you look at their rhetoric about rogue DAs, progressive DAs, they’re looking at mainly women of color, Democratic DAs who were elected—especially in 2020. 

When you talk of your approach to justice, are there specific policies that you think are driving the reaction you describe? 

With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, myself and a couple of other prosecutors have come out and said that we would not prosecute women who were seeking reproductive health care nor the doctors who are providing that. I think that was something that many people were against. 

That was part of my campaign platform [in 2020], even though it predated Dobbs. Because we knew this was a possibility. Reproductive health rights have always been attacked in the South.

Or, the fact that we said we would focus on serious and violent crime instead of low-level crimes and misdemeanors, focus on those crimes that have the most impact in terms of our community safety, instead of necessarily going after people for simple possession of marijuana. 

It seems important to you to say that you ran on these issues. 

Exactly. If you look at my campaign website, if you look at my campaign materials, this was my platform, this is what I ran on, and this is what the community elected. I didn’t hide it away. 

So much used to happen behind closed doors; they talk about the black box of the judiciary because nobody knew how decisions were made. Now you’re seeing reform minded DAs who are much more transparent in what is happening in their offices, our platforms and what our policies are. That had not happened before.

Republican lawmakers are defending the new law by saying it’s not appropriate for prosecutors to set up a ‘declination’ policy, to say they won’t prosecute a type of cases. What is your approach on that, in terms of how you see the job of a DA?

First of all, every DA office around the country has to prioritize to their capacity. We cannot, it is an impossibility, take every single case all the way to trial. We have limited resources, we only have a certain amount of time. I’ve been asking my county to help me and give me more resources and raise the salaries, I have been very vocal that we have a prosecutor shortage; we had our chief justice of the Georgia supreme court come out saying that we have a prosecutor shortage, especially outside of the Atlanta area, so this is not a secret. 

Number two, because we have limited resources, isn’t it better to say, “Look, we’re going to focus on the really important serious stuff here, let’s not waste our time on making arrests on these things?” Do we look at every single case? Yes, absolutely, we do: Before we say what we’re going to do with it, we look at every single one of them, and then make our decisions. But we do prioritize the most serious and the most violent of those cases. 

Number three, I think there is a factor of public safety. My community elected me because they feel I shared their values, and by me saying I will not prosecute women for seeking reproductive health care. That also gives a sense of security and safety to women, those constituents of mine, who may have to undergo an abortion—whether it’s medically necessary, or if it’s a choice for them that they make with their doctor about their body—that they feel that they won’t have to worry about being then charged with something, that they can go to a fully licensed doctor and not have to do something in the back alleys, which can put at risk their lives even more so. 

Several of your colleagues, including Atlanta’s DA Fani Willis, have pointed to adultery laws when they’ve responded to the view that it’s inappropriate for a DA to not prosecute. They’ve said that adultery is illegal in Georgia and yet no DA goes after adultery cases. Now, this new law bars DAs from “categorically” refusing a type of charge, so how does that affect the status quo on adultery?

I don’t think there’s anybody who would really want to see us all of a sudden start prosecuting adultery. 

The first thing is, somebody’s got to get arrested: The police have to do the arrest, we don’t have arresting authority. And I don’t think the police are gonna go out and arrest people.

And no one is objecting that the police have the discretion to not arrest people for adultery.

Right.

Besides marijuana, which you mentioned earlier, one complaint in the lawsuit filed against you is that you’re not prosecuting drug cases. What is your office’s approach to that area?

Marijuana is very different from other kinds of drugs. We’ve never stopped what people consider the traditional prosecution of having drugs with the intent to sell, or producing drugs with the intent to sell. We have always prosecuted those. What we look at is, is that person who has that certain amount of drugs—we have accountability courts that we can put them in if they really have a serious drug addiction. So let’s say we have somebody who’s done 10 shoplifting cases: Maybe the issue is not that they’re shoplifting; the issue is, why are they shoplifting? And if they’re shoplifting to see an addiction, then we need to get them help for the addiction. But putting them in jail just for shoplifting again isn’t going to help them; we have to give them the help that they need to deal with a substance abuse or mental health issue, or whatever it is, to get to the cause. That’s what I look at. 

I think people have this idea that prosecution is only what happens in front of the court, that it’s only a trial. I take the view that prosecution is everything that we do in that case, from intake and looking at it and determining, ‘Do we have enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, or do we need to dismiss it because there’s missing evidence? Are we going to proceed with accountability courts, or a pre-trial diversion program, or a restorative justice program?’ All that is still prosecution because all that is still holding people accountable for what they’ve done; it’s just holding them accountable in a more humane way and focusing on rehabilitation to reduce recidivism. And then there are those cases where those alternatives do not fit.

One of the things I see in the lawsuit is the idea I’m not doing my job. What they’re really trying to say is they don’t like the way I’m doing my job and they want to determine how I should do my job.

When you responded to my interview request, you knew that I wanted to ask about SB 92 and your policies. How do you think about the consequences of accepting an interview on this topic, since you’re also saying that your public stance on these matters is part of what the law targets?

I always felt I had a target on my back. I had my platform, many of them were not happy when I won, they started immediately with trying to secede, they put in this bill. 

I give these interviews though because I want people to understand where I’m coming from and where reform-minded prosecutors come from: We take public safety very seriously, we just believe there’s a better way to do it than just incarcerating people. And we want to be able to use the same tools: Prosecutorial discretion has not been a problem for generations, but because you have a new class of reform minded prosecutors coming into power and who can now use that same discretion to hold people accountable but in a fair and just way, now it’s a problem. 

I believe part of that is based on racism, and based on the idea that it threatens the status quo that has kept Black, brown, and poor people oppressed through the criminal legal system. 

I don’t think there’s anything more that I could say that would get me into more trouble, or make the target bigger on my back than what it is. I’ve been open and bold from the beginning, and I think that’s part of the reason why my community elected me because they wanted somebody who would speak for them.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The piece was updated on Friday evening to reflect that Governor Brian Kemp signed the bill.

The post “A Target on My Back”: New GOP Law Aims to Force Georgia Prosecutors’ Hands appeared first on Bolts.

Among other measures, her office will stop prosecuting people for simple possession of marijuana, decline to prosecute or divert other low-level drug possession cases, and limit charges that carry mandatory minimum sentences. Gonzalez also rules out ever seeking the death penalty. 

Some of the most important transformations, though, concern probation, an issue that is particularly significant in Georgia: The state has the highest population of people on probation in the country, with more than 400,000 individuals under community supervision in 2018.

Gonzalez’s memo aims to significantly reduce probation; it lays out plans to avoid charging people for technical violations of probation, and to shorten probation terms. 

“Probation is this back door into incarceration,” Gonzalez told The Appeal: Political Report. “We [prosecutors] have the power and authority to make many of those fixes that are part of the problem and the causes of mass incarceration … we want to hold people accountable, but we want to do it in a humane way.”

Gonzalez joins a growing wave of progressives who are taking over DA offices. Last year, reform-minded prosecutor candidates won elections in New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Austin, Texas, among other places. Now, some are quickly enacting the policies they championed on the campaign trail. This week, Eli Savit, the newly elected prosecutor of Washtenaw County, Michigan (Ann Arbor) announced his office would not seek cash bail. In December, George Gascón, the new DA of Los Angeles County, set forth a wide-ranging slate of reforms.

In Athens, Gonzalez’s victory is the latest in a string of progressive wins for local offices. A groundswell of grassroots organizing has helped elect progressive candidates to local office and made criminal justice reform a focal point.

Gonzalez says she was inspired to address probation after meeting with members of the Athens Reentry Collaborative, a community of individuals affected by incarceration and the criminal legal system. She learned that though probation was an alternative to incarceration, it still burdens people with surveillance, bills, and stigma. 

“They’re not incarcerated, but [probation] can affect their ability to get a job, it can affect their ability to get a school loan, or even be accepted into certain schools,” Gonzalez said. “Probation affects whether they can get their kids back, if they lost custody, because they’re still technically serving [a sentence], even though they’re free.”

In its original conception, probation “was meant to be rehabilitative in the sense that folks on probation were to be given the opportunity to change their behavior and reform their lives without having their liberty deprived of them,” said Sarah Shannon, a University of Georgia sociology professor and one of the coordinators of the collaborative.

But that’s not the reality, Shannon said. People on probation talk about its “many hoops” as “almost being double or triple punishment,” she added. 

The rules of probation can be onerous, requiring weekly meetings with officers, drug testing, and other forms of surveillance and monitoring. Many of these requirements come with costs, on top of a standard, monthly probation fee. Probation officers can choose to waive the monthly fees, but other costs brought on by the terms of probation—like ankle monitoring services and drug tests—can add up.

“If you are sentenced to an anger management or family violence class, those fees are up to you,” said Shannon. “So your inability to pay for those things may mean that you can’t successfully complete your probation.” 

Simple violations of such probation terms, like missing a bill or an appointment, could result in jail time––what probation sentences arguably seek to avoid. 

“So when you think about the number of conditions that you have to meet, then that’s the number of opportunities that you have to fail, and therefore end up for a long period of time being vulnerable to being incarcerated anyway,” Shannon said.

Many counties handle misdemeanor probation through private companies like Sentinel Offender Services. This was part of a larger push within Georgia, starting in the 1990s, to trim local budgets by outsourcing misdemeanor probation management. But it created a profit motive that can lead to probation companies neglecting the rights of indigent defendants. 

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that probation generally cannot be revoked, resulting in incarceration, if an individual is unable to pay their fines and fees despite attempting to do so. However, there is no statewide standard for poverty in these cases and many courts delegate that determination to probation companies. Recent lawsuits in Georgia found that Sentinel threatened to jail indigent probationers for their inability to pay, and it unlawfully collected fees.

Though private companies don’t handle misdemeanor probation in Athens-Clarke or Oconee counties, there’s still a problem of technical probation violations landing people in jail. Gonzalez has purview over misdemeanor probation in Oconee (in Athens-Clarke it’s the responsibility of a Solicitor General), and she wants to avoid revoking probation for technical violations—like failed drug tests or failure to pay fees. She also wants to build on existing efforts to bring down the cost of probation; for example, judges have set up a fund to offset the financial burden for people on probation.

Gonzalez also will cap probation at two or three years, depending on the circumstances. 

Georgia not only has the largest number of people on probation, it also has the longest probation sentences, with an average of more than six years in 2016. More than one-third of people on probation serve sentences longer than 10 years. 

“What we see with these extremely long probation sentences is that it is more punitive than anything,” Gonzalez said. She said it’s possible for someone sentenced to 10 years on probation to complete nine years without incident, commit a technical violation in the last year, and go to prison for a decade. 

Gonzalez’s new policies of not prosecuting marijuana possession and some low-level drug possession cases would also reduce the number of people who receive probation terms in the first place. Marijuana arrests have disproportionately targeted Black residents in Athens.

Gonzalez’s path to the prosecutor’s office was a rocky one. She was elected despite Governor Brian Kemp’s attempts to cancel last year’s DA election for Athens-Clarke and Oconee counties, which would have effectively ensured that the interim DA, Democrat Brian Patterson, could stay in office for another two years. Gonzalez sued Kemp, resulting in a unanimous decision from the Georgia Supreme Court upholding the need for an election.

Gonzalez’s success is emblematic of local politics in Athens, which has seen a rising tide of progressivism. In 2014, Tim Denson, an activist in the Occupy Movement, ran for mayor on promises to cut the city’s poverty rate in half and provide free bus service and affordable child care. Though he didn’t win, Denson went on to form a political group called Athens For Everyone, which, along with other groups like the Athens Anti-Discrimination Movement, has become a force shaping local government.

In 2018, Athens for Everyone helped get six progressive candidates, including Denson, elected to seats on the Athens-Clarke County Commission, and also endorsed Kelly Girtz, who won the mayoral race. These candidates have largely championed policies to address racial inequity, climate change, living wages, affordable housing, and criminal justice reform. 

Commissioner Mariah Parker, who made national news when she was sworn in on “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” was instrumental in passing a measure last year that ended cash bail for violations of local ordinances. She and Denson have also pushed to decriminalize marijuana and end the use of unpaid jail labor. These measures have the support of the new Athens sheriff, John Williams, who was also elected in 2020 after ousting an incumbent in the Democratic primary on promises of not accepting donations from the bail bonds industry and ending cooperation with ICE. 

Erin Stacer, president of Athens for Everyone, says these progressive wins were the product of years of work by local activists. “It was really the organizers around town who engaged people in a way that got them … to start realizing that there is a local government and that they have a say,” she said.

“This is about human lives,” she added. “This is about changing people and changing our systems, so that we do not destroy people, but rather look at them as part of our society.”

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Death penalty opponents have made great strides over the last decade, getting states to outlaw the sentence or at least reduce its use. Now they’re gaining allies from local officials with direct power to shut down capital punishment: prosecutors. 

Last week, Deborah Gonzalez and Jason Williams became the latest candidates to win elections for district attorney after pledging to never seek the death penalty once in office.

Their runoff wins in Athens, Georgia, and New Orleans add to a string of similar results this year in Los Angeles County, Arizona’s Pima County (Tucson), Georgia’s Fulton County (Atlanta), Oregon’s Multnomah County (Portland), and Texas’s Travis County (Austin). Incoming prosecutors largely echoed advocates’ longtime claims, emphasizing that the death penalty is applied very unequally and that its use is inhumane and costly.

Their wins are poised to upend the culture of capital punishment in places that have been prolific in handing out death sentences, and advocates are preparing to press them to overturn these past sentences.

There are more than 200 people on death row from Los Angeles, where the DA election in November saw George Gascón defeat an incumbent who over the course of her tenure secured the death penalty nearly exclusively against people of color. Gascón took office this week and promptly repeated his campaign pledge to not just drop the death penalty in future cases but also review past death sentences, a step few prosecutors have taken.

“The death penalty does not make us safer,” Gascón tweeted on Monday. “It’s racist, morally untenable, irreversible, and expensive. And today, it’s off the table.”

Pima County has also been a death penalty hotspot. It leads Arizona counties in number of executions since the penalty was reinstated in 1976. But this fall voters elected as their chief prosecutor a former public defender, Laura Conover, who highlighted her past advocacy with the Coalition of Arizonans to Abolish the Death Penalty. Conover is not the first candidate with such experience to be elected. Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, who was the legal director of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, won a prosecutor’s race in northern Virginia last year on a similar platform.

“It’s absolutely tremendous and exciting that this is taking place in Louisiana, and in Georgia, and in Virginia, states that have a long history with the death penalty, and of course Los Angeles County, one of the biggest contributors to the enormous Californian death row,” said Laura Porter, executive director of the 8th Amendment Project. “It’s supportive of the trend of the country overall moving away from the death penalty.”

These seven newly elected prosecutors who said they would never seek a death sentence are Democrats, even though Republicans haven’t been absent from the anti-death penalty movement. Support from some Republican lawmakers proved decisive in 2019 and 2020 when Colorado and New Hampshire’s legislatures repealed the death penalty. (The Political Report only analyzed candidate positions in the 28 states where the death penalty is still legal.)

Elsewhere, longtime prosecutors who have repeatedly used the death penalty lost re-election bids. Most notably, Ron O’Brien is on his way out in Franklin County, Ohio, after decades of zealously championing capital punishment. The incoming prosecutor, Democrat Gary Tyack, told the Political Report via a spokesperson during his campaign that he would support legislation to ban the death penalty but also that he would consider seeking it as long as it is permitted by the state. Patsy Austin-Gatson, the incoming Democratic DA in Gwinnett County, Georgia, told the Political Report the same thing this week. 

Advocates hope that more DAs will draw strong lines in the sand and rule out adding people to death row. 

But they also stress that, even with those who make such forward-looking commitments, more is needed. Prosecutors who oppose the death penalty should also use all legal and political means at their disposal to resentence people who are already on death row and to fight their executions.

“It’s really important … to push prosecutors not just to say, ‘I’ll refrain from using this harsh practice in the future,’ but to refuse to preside over it in the present,” said Ben Cohen, an attorney who works against the death penalty in Louisiana. “It’s barbaric to allow death sentences from the 1980’s and 1990’s to be executed on your watch.”

“A progressive prosecutor has to do more than sit on their hands,” he added.

Defense attorneys have had some success in recent years overturning sentences in Louisiana, but Cohen said he has not seen cooperation from the outgoing DA’s office in New Orleans, where there are five people on death row. DA Leon Cannizzaro did not seek re-election this year, and he will be replaced by Williams, who won in a landslide on Saturday after embracing a reform platform put forth by local organizers that included opposition to the death penalty. He did not answer a request for comment this week about how he will address people already on death row.

In Los Angeles, though, Gascón released a plan early in his campaign outlining how he would aim to get people off of death row “utilizing every legal avenue available to me.” 

“It’s completely transformative,” said Natasha Minsker, an attorney who is part of Gascón’s transition team on the death penalty. “The fact that Los Angeles County is now, as of today, going to stop pursuing death sentences and going to shift in a different direction … is a complete game changer.” No county in the nation has more people on death row than Los Angeles; Angelenos approved abolishing capital punishment in a 2016 referendum but the initiative failed statewide. 

Minsker outlined the range of tools that Gascón can use. Where there is active litigation over a specific legal or factual issue, he could concede arguments made by defense attorneys “and no longer fight for [death sentences] to be in place,” she said. Many appeals are handled by the attorney general rather than the DA, but Gascón could still file amicus briefs to assist people contesting their sentences.

Gascón could also request a resentencing hearing for someone on death row, Minsker said. DAs don’t necessarily have this power nationally; here it stems from California’s relatively new Section 1170(d), a statute that adopted in 2018 that expanded DAs’ powers to revisit old cases.

Minsker warned that courts retain ultimate say in whether to remove people from death row. “The real unknown here is the judges,” she said. “I’m concerned that we may end up in a situation where we have disparities based on who the judge is.”

It is usually prosecutors who are the greatest hurdle to ending or curtailing the death penalty. They routinely work to derail legislative proposals, including in Ohio, Oregon, and Wyoming over the last few years. Even DAs who campaigned on their discomfort with capital punishment have gone on to fight efforts to stop executions, such as Kim Ogg in Harris County (Houston). But Ogg had not outright ruled out seeking the death penalty during her 2016 campaign, a far cry from the stronger positions staked by the latest wave of winners.

One of those winners is, like Ogg, in Texas. In Travis County, which has executed eight people since 1976, José Garza ousted the incumbent DA after promising to not seek the death penalty and to review past sentences for legal or factual errors. He has also vowed to stand up to potential pushback from statewide officials. 

“We have an obligation and a responsibility to show people a different way of governing in the state of Texas,” Garza told the Political Report in June. 

In breaking their profession’s usual mold, prosecutors like Conover, Garza, or Gascón could indeed do more than affect the cases immediately before them. 

They may be able to make it harder for prosecutors’ powerful statewide associations to keep up their lobbying for the death penalty. And they can be influential allies for activists and lawmakers who are seeking to advance legislation or lawsuits against capital punishment. Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner has joined legal efforts to overturn the death penalty in Pennsylvania, for instance, and this month, dozens of reform-minded prosecutors signed on to a letter spearheaded by the organization Fair and Just Prosecution that opposed the resumption of federal executions.

“We’re trying to have this conversation about [prosecutors’ role] in creating effective responses to reduce violence,” said Porter of the 8th Amendment Project, “rather than just getting caught up in fear-based politics.”

The post Newly Elected Prosecutors Are Challenging the Death Penalty appeared first on Bolts.

John Williams, who ousted Sheriff Ira Edwards by two percentage points to secure the Democratic nomination, still faces a general election though he is favored to win in this blue jurisdiction. He has run on a promise to not help ICE and not detain people when the federal agency requests it. 

“I talk about treating people with dignity and respect,” he reiterated in a phone interview on Thursday. “You go against that when you bring in fear of being deported and having your life changed.”

Sheriffs exercise a great deal of discretion when it comes to how they assist ICE, and whether they help ICE take custody of people who are already booked into jail on other grounds.

Edwards, the incumbent, had come under fire from immigrants’ rights advocates for agreeing to honor so-called ICE detainers. These are warrantless requests that a sheriff’s department voluntarily keep people detained in jail beyond their scheduled release to give federal agents more time to come and claim custody. “We got the word out,” recalls Lori Garrett-Hatfield, a member of the Athens Immigrant Rights Coalition. “We started with calls, we wrote letters.” In April 2018, Edwards announced he would no longer honor detainers, a reversal Garrett-Hatfield attributes to “public agitation and anger.”

At the time, advocates told the local press that they did not trust that Edwards would maintain that policy given some of his other statements. And Garrett-Hatfield echoed that sentiment in a phone interview this week. “We saw that as a small victory, but we knew that to really make a change we needed to have someone else run as sheriff,” she said.

Williams, who works as a detective in the Athens police department, met with immigrants’ rights advocates after entering the race, and he said he felt affected by those conversations. “I heard some things where my jaw dropped and I could not say anything,” he said, mentioning Latinx children barred from speaking Spanish in the classroom. “I would not have my family treated that way, so I’m not going to have anyone else’s family treated that way.”

Williams stated during the campaign that he would not honor ICE detainers, calling this one of the reasons he chose to run. 

“What I’ve seen time and time again is that people who are undocumented or underdocumented will not call the police in situations where they could use some help or where there’s violence going on,” he told me. “They’re more concerned with, ‘Is this going to lead to more people in my family being picked up? Will they be deported?’ It’s almost a level of terrorism when people are living in fear to the point that they will not ask for help.”

In November, Williams will face Republican Robert Hare, who used to work in the sheriff’s office. Hare has said he supports contracting into ICE’s 287(g) program, which would considerably amplify and formalize the county’s existing relationship with ICE. Williams opposes joining 287(g).

—

The 287(g) program, which authorizes and trains deputies to act as federal immigration agents in the jail, is a rare arrangement: Just 6 of Georgia’s 159 sheriff’s departments currently contract into it. And immigrants rights’ advocates hope to cut that number down further this fall. 

They are gearing up to target the program’s presence in Cobb County and Gwinnett County, two very populous jurisdictions in the suburbs of Atlanta.

Cobb and Gwinnett used to be Republican strongholds, and they are still headed by Republican sheriffs who have championed ICE; Cobb County’s Neil Warren even touts himself as “one of America’s Toughest Sheriffs on illegal immigration” on his department’s official website. But both counties have rapidly swung toward Democrats; and both voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. 

These changing politics give Democrats golden opportunities to pick-up the two sheriff’s offices this fall and then cut ties with ICE. Sheriffs have the authority to unilaterally terminate 287(g) contracts.

As of Tuesday, Cobb and Gwinnett counties are both certain to hold a general election between a Republican who wants to stay in 287(g) and a Democrat who wants out. Although the Democratic nominees won’t be selected until August runoffs, all four candidates who advanced on Tuesday (two from each county) favor at least leaving the program. 

Aisha Yaqoob Mahmood, director of the Asian American Advocacy Fund, a group that has fought local partnerships with ICE, stressed that “four years ago, nobody knew what this program did,” whereas today candidates are frequently broaching this issue on the trail. “The last few years of organizing were very important for us to make sure that 287(g) becomes a top issue in this election, and it really has become that way,” she said. “It’s really amazing to see the trajectory.” Mahmood’s organization has focused on Gwinnett County so far; other groups such as the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights are also playing a leading role across the state.

Mahmood stressed that her organization also worked alongside groups involved in criminal justice advocacy to “make sure that we are not just uplifting immigration issues but other issues that are important to communities of color like ending cash bail and conditions in the jail.”

—

That same confluence of issues also played out in Athens. The primary between Edwards and Williams, who are both African American, came in the midst of the protests against racial inequality and police brutality that have taken place in Athens in recent weeks. 

The Athens Anti Discrimination Movement, a group that organized these rallies, drew attention to racial injustice in the local criminal legal system in recent years. In 2019, it supported a measure that was adopted by the local government to eliminate the use of cash bail for lower-level offenses. 

Williams told me he “firmly supports” this reform, and he pledged during the campaign to not take donations from bail bond agents. By contrast, as of April, the biggest donor to the incumbent’s campaign was the owner of a bail bond company, according to Athens Politics Nerd, a local news website that has interviewed both candidates. Williams did not express an interest in going further than that ordinance in reducing pretrial detention, though.

The Black Male Voter Project, a national outreach organization that is active in Georgia, highlighted the importance of bail reform while contacting African American voters, Mondale Robinson, the group’s founder, told me. “We’ve been duped as a country to care more about national issues than local issues,” he said. “We have to tell the message that district attorneys, sheriffs are more important than has been said.”

Athens was supposed to hold a DA race as well this year; Deborah Gonzalez, a former state representative, was set to carry the reformer mantle. But a series of nondemocratic decisions by local and state officials this spring led that election to be outright canceled, blocking off policy change in the DA’s office. Gonzalez is now suing to force Georgia to hold this election. The lawsuit is pending, and Gonzalez told me that if it were to fail she would run for DA in 2022.

“I think having John Williams in place for those two years can show people what is possible and why it’s important,” she said, “so we’re not just punitive in terms of our law enforcement but looking at how we resolve those underlying issues.”

Still, the issue of immigration jumps out given that it has injected clear contrasts in sheriff’s races nationwide. Williams’s victory comes just six weeks after a comparable result in Cincinnati, where the sheriff also fell in the Democratic primary against a challenger who vowed to stop honoring ICE detainers, and two years after a wave of similar upsets in races where sheriffs’ cooperation with ICE featured prominently.

Garrett-Hatfield, referring to her experience in Athens, attributes this shift to the rising organizing that has taken place since Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2016. 

“People started to realize, do we want this community to feel in fear, or do we want a community where people feel welcome and where they are valued as community members?”, she said.

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