Legislative panel to confront Georgia’s ‘broken’ post-conviction system

by Maya Homan, Georgia Recorder, [This article first appeared in the Georgia Recorder, republished with permission]

July 10, 2026

A legislative study committee aimed at improving the appeals process for those convicted of crimes in Georgia will hold its first meeting Friday to address a system that Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Nels Peterson labeled “broken” and “a mess” in an opinion issued earlier this year.

The case centered around Joshua Sanders, an Alabama man who was convicted in 2023 of killing two Georgia women in Vidalia. The day after he was sentenced, he filed a motion for a new trial, which was later denied. In an appeal to that denial, he claimed that his court-appointed lawyers were ineffective during his trial, and that the lawyers who filed the appeal did not mention his ineffective counsel claims when requesting a new trial. 

Joshua B. Smith, Sanders’ current attorney, argued that his client’s claim of ineffective counsel fulfilled a two-prong requirement that the legal representation be deficient and that the deficiency alter the outcome of the case. The trial court attorney, he said, failed to properly shape his client’s narrative, leading him to reveal incriminating information about his drug use and plans to start an escort business to the jury.

“All competent lawyers know to avoid asking their clients questions on the stand that would paint them as pimps or drug dealers, and do nothing to add or support any potential defense,” Smith wrote in a brief filed with the Georgia Supreme Court.

But briefs filed by both the Georgia attorney general’s office and the Middle Judicial Circuit district attorney’s office dispute Smith’s claims, arguing that the claim of ineffective counsel would not have prevented Sanders’ conviction and didn’t follow proper procedure that requires such claims to be raised during the motion for the new trial.

Sanders “has not shown that there would be a reasonable probability of a different outcome at trial if this testimony had been curtailed,” the attorney general’s office wrote in their brief.

The state Supreme Court ultimately upheld the conviction in an unanimous decision released in March. But in a concurring opinion, Peterson wrote that the case highlights a much broader set of problems within the state’s legal system. Most states allow ineffective trial claims to be filed through a habeas corpus petition, which can be filed even after a defendant has exhausted all other options for appealing their case. 

The fact that Georgia requires ineffective counsel claims to be raised during the motion for a new trial, Peterson argued, makes the state an “outlier,” bogging down the system and ultimately increasing costs for both district attorneys and public defenders. 

“No rational person would have chosen the system we have today if presented with it as a whole,” Peterson said in his opinion. Improving the system unilaterally “far exceeds the judicial power,” he added, calling on the Legislature to address the issues.

“In short, the system is broken. We did a lot of the breaking. But it will require legislative action to fix it,” Peterson wrote. 

Rep. Scott Holcomb, a lawyer and Atlanta Democrat on the committee, said he expects legislators to examine how other states handle claims of ineffective counsel, and possibly work to “decouple” such claims from requests for a new trial.

For trial court lawyers who are legitimately inadequate, Holcomb said, “that person is not going to say ‘I didn’t do my job and I was ineffective.’ So you have to bring in different lawyers to do that, which then slows down the system because that person has to get completely up to speed.”

According to Holcomb, separating those two processes will likely have bipartisan support. But the question of how to provide legal representation to allow defendants to file habeas petitions “is going to be a little bit more complicated, and there will be some potential costs to the state,” Holcomb said.

The committee is scheduled to meet Friday afternoon at the Nathan Deal Judicial Center, which is home to the Georgia Supreme Court, in Atlanta.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jill Nolin for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.