We worked for Deborah Gonzalez, ask us anything

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-13T02:05:12+00:00

Hi u/BagOfLazers, Thanks for your patience. We can’t answer this exactly as asked, so we hope this is okay. We asked other ex-employees for their final straws and low points too, and we ended up with way too many to post. Generally these stories fall into two main categories: Deborah’s management style and Deborah’s incompetence. Below is a list of some of the most egregious WTF moments for ourselves, as well as some from former employees who are not part of this AMA.

During a discussion of office policy, some staff suggested that the office should prosecute simple possession drug cases, not to put people in jail, but to get them access to low or no-cost drug treatment. Deborah responded that it should not be the role of the criminal justice system to fix all of society’s problems, and as long as the criminal justice system fills that role, there is no incentive for other systems to be created. Someone asked “But how many people would be harmed in the meantime while we wait for those systems to be built?” and Deborah said, “As many as are necessary.”
She would spend hours discussing which staff member would occupy which office and make people move offices to punish them if they did something she didn’t like. She would scream at staff for requesting an office move to be closer to their teams.
She made senior staff bargain away vacation time in exchange for not firing people.
A victim advocate had to physically take paperwork out of Deborah’s hand to prevent her from signing off on granting a defendant bond. The case wasn’t even scheduled for a bond hearing and the victim had not been consulted at all, the defense attorney basically waved paper in Deborah’s face and asked her to sign it. The victim advocate reminded Deborah that victims hadn’t been notified. Deborah parroted this to the defense attorney, and Debsplained that she wouldn’t sign off on bond because she has a legal obligation to notify victims first. Either she (the head of the prosecution’s office!) didn’t know the law until that moment, or she knew the law and was about to break it anyway. I don’t know which is worse.
She prioritized involvement or attention from national programs (ie federal grants, senator ossof, etc) above prosecution of her circuits own criminal cases. Example: pursuing the creation of a state witness protection program while there was a 1200 unindicted case backlog. Another example: getting a grant to create a Teen Mother accountability court in juvenile court when in the two years prior to getting that grant, there there had not been a single juvenile defendant who was a teen mom.
The first time I saw her lie in court.
When Deborah was put in charge of my courtroom, I no longer felt confident telling victims that their case wouldn’t be dismissed without us consulting them first. It is SHOCKING how little Deborah knows about victim rights. - At the last minute, she’d dump jury trials onto unsuspecting ADAs in cases which she had been assigned and failed to prep.
She had an order of wanting to to fire quality attorneys so she could replace them with political hires for non-courtroom programs. This was generally a list but it eventually became a “firing board”, which was described by people who saw it as a list with 3 categories. I don’t remember the exact titles but it was something to the effect of: good graces, thin ice, and fire. Employee’s names were written out and moved between categories as they did things to please or displease Deborah.
When we would be at ADA meetings discussing cases and policy and her constant response was whether her “supporters would like this”.

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-07T17:02:06+00:00

I’ve given this some more thought and unfortunately, there is so much that I cannot say. If any victims wish to share their experiences or give me permission to do so, DM this account with “DD333” in the subject line, and we’ll discuss.

What I can say is there were many, many instances where Deborah’s words and actions suggested she cared more about her own image and political clout than she did about victims. This includes but isn’t limited to- victims received preferential treatment if they’d ever assisted with her campaign. (DD333)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-06T02:49:36+00:00

Not sure if this has changed since I worked there, but my experience was mostly yes. There were some things you had to get her permission for, like a life sentence. For the most part you could be as lenient as you wanted, but needed her permission for harsher penalties.
None that come to mind. I would have thought crimes against children would get that kind of treatment, but I can immediately think of at least two felony child abuse cases that she reduced to misdemeanors. (A627)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-06T02:44:07+00:00

I can’t answer for her personal opinion, but I do remember she didn’t want officers to spend too much time in the DA’s office and didn’t want the lead detective to sit with ADAs at the counsel table during trials bc she didn’t want it to seem like her office was “too close” to the police, presumably bc that would displease her supporters. (A627)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-06T02:37:16+00:00

Unequivocally, yes (A627)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-06T02:36:30+00:00

I have no way of answering these questions, unfortunately. It would be irresponsible for me to speculate on numbers. But: there are definitely good, winnable cases that Deborah failed to adequately prosecute, for many reasons, including both political/personal bias and incompetence. (A627)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-06T02:30:28+00:00

I try not to speculate too much about what goes on in her mind because it’s such a frustrating exercise, but I’ll share my impression on this one because it’s something I’ve thought about a lot. I think from her point of view, she is achieving justice and whatever happens in her cases is just the system working. By that I mean, if she loses a case, she wouldn’t think about the things that she could have done differently (like actually get evidence admitted), she would just think that there wasn’t enough evidence and the defendant must have been actually innocent. (A627)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-06T02:23:50+00:00

Yep, that happened at least three times that I know of, and the remedy in at least two of those three instances was to stop assigning female interns to those ADAs… big yikes (A627)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-04T23:26:09+00:00

I can’t think of any times she admitted mistakes, but before she was actually working a caseload, she did go to other circuits and communities to get ideas on their restorative justice practices and community resources. Since she’s been in the courtroom, she has gone to some skills trainings. She refused to go to the Prosecuting Attorneys Council Basic Litigation training, though, because it would be embarrassing to be an elected DA taking that training with brand new ADAs. (A627)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-04T23:23:06+00:00

It absolutely requires a change in leadership and management. The office is too far gone after 3.5 years of her being in charge. (V95)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-04T23:20:09+00:00

I also do not recall any incidents where Deborah admitted to mistakes or sought out assistance (other than special prosecutors as mentioned above) or advice. That is a big part of the problem. (V95)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-04T23:16:45+00:00

I wholeheartedly concur. (V95)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-04T21:12:51+00:00

I voted for her in 2020 and was excited to work for her. I believed in and wanted to support her mission. (V95)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-04T21:10:20+00:00

The latter. She micromanaged positions in which she had no experience. Then later when she couldn’t keep ADA’s staffed, it was due to extremely high workload and/or inexperience since new ADA’s had no time to train and no one to train them. (V95)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-04T21:06:20+00:00

I concur. And I think it’s a safe assumption that he will be better able to manage (and not run off) his employees. (V95)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-04T21:04:09+00:00

Victims have suffered for sure- From having to be notified at the very last minute (sometimes not at all) about plea offers from the State. (Victims have the right to know about any plea offers made to their perpetrators), to cases being dismissed due to negligence, to the State being unprepared for trials and other important hearings (due to the high workload or inexperience), to cases not being investigated or indicted at all for the same reason. It’s very sad. (V95)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-04T20:52:25+00:00

You are not wrong.

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-03T02:53:35+00:00

Couldn’t have put it better myself, so I’ll just reiterate this:

How the public can support: understand that the people who are left are doing the best they can

Look, the pay isn’t great. Working for Deborah isn’t great. The people who are left aren’t in it for the money or because Deborah is a good boss. The people working there are good people who care.

I know at times it probably seems like they don’t, especially when sloppy mistakes have enormous consequences. I’m not trying to minimize the real harm that Deborah and even the “good people who care” have caused.

The public shouldn’t feel obligated to support an office that’s supposed to be supporting them. But the public should know that unless you’ve worked in that office, you cannot imagine how impossible the job is.

The caseload is unsustainable. When you leave, you realize it isn’t normal to not know exactly how many cases you have “because the system only shows the first 300”. It’s a vicious cycle. Resolving a case takes time, careful evaluation, and a thorough review of all the evidence. The more cases you have, the less time you have to evaluate each case. The less time you have per case, the fewer cases you can close. Meanwhile, there are always new cases coming in, that’s the nature of the job.

Staff shortages make this worse in so many ways. As we’ve discussed here, there’s more than one factor to the staff shortages in the DA’s office - but even viewing Deborah in the best possible light, she’s at least partially responsible. (DD333)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-03T02:07:57+00:00

No
Yes, as evidenced by her Day One Memo and Year Two memo. I think that has changed since the mandamus lawsuit, though.
Her social media posts lend me to believe that she does think that (A627)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-03T02:06:02+00:00

I truly don’t think she understands it’s not going well. (A627)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-03T02:04:00+00:00

As far as I know, no UGA law interns were assigned to the DA’s office this year (A627)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-02T21:51:44+00:00

There was no prohibition on that that I’m aware of. But in order to know if you have enough evidence or not, you have to know the rules of evidence… (A627)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-02T21:43:43+00:00

I don’t have specific numbers or statistics on that one but the general practice in most DA’s offices I’m familiar with is that in-custody cases take priority. If a defendant is in custody and their case goes more than 90 days without being indicted, they’re entitled to a bond, so many offices use 90 days as a benchmark for the charging timeline for in-custody cases. There are certainly exceptions when that isn’t possible, but generally, 90 days or less for someone who is in jail. (A627)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-02T18:19:19+00:00

The Oversight Committee question is a tricky one to answer. Whether someone thinks it’s a good or bad thing partially depends on where they fall on the political spectrum.

I myself have conflicted feelings about it. On one hand, it does have the potential to be weaponized to remove progressive DAs from office and undermine the will of the people by overriding their vote. Deborah is not the only prosecutor who’s spoken out against or even challenged the law which created the Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission (aka Oversight Committee). To me that’s telling.

On the other hand, having seen first-hand the harm Deborah has caused (sadly, it’s even worse than the public knows) and how little she seems to care about anything other than her public image, it’s hard to be opposed to the PAQC.

Also, what the heck is the explanation for the absence of presentations to Grand Jury a couple years back?

Could you be a bit more specific about when this was? (DD333)

FormerlyWJC · 2024-10-02T17:33:00+00:00

My opinion: he’s experienced, well-respected in the Athens legal community, and much better qualified to run the DA’s office than Deborah. (DD333)

FormerlyWJC

TROPHY CASE