DELUGE OF DRUG-WAR DEFENDANTS CLOGS GWINNETT COURTS

Gwinnett County's crackdown on drug cartels has led to a trafficking
jam in court.

Local-federal task force investigations that resulted in hundreds of
arrests have also spawned huge multi-defendant cases that are now
clogging the docket.

The largest and most daunting of these cases involves 71 defendants
who are allegedly connected to the La Familia drug cartel based in
Mexico. La Familia controls most of the crystal methamphetamine market
in the United States. Last October, authorities seized 174 pounds of
crystal meth and arrested 35 people throughout metro Atlanta after
raiding a house containing one of the cartel's labs in
Lawrenceville.

The La Familia case is just one of several pending cases against
defendants with ties to drug trafficking organizations. A second,
25-defendant case involves a conspiracy to smuggle methamphetamine and
cocaine. Another 35-defendant case involves an Asian ring importing
ecstasy through Canada.

In the past, local drug investigations typically resulted in cases
with a handful of defendants, Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny
Porter said.

Porter says his office is still trying to clear the logistic and
budgetary hurdles associated with prosecuting these larger cases.

"We may be trying these cases in the auditorium," Porter
said.

The total cost of the trials is virtually incalculable. Porter asked
for $233,813 in county funds in 2008 to hire two new staffers and
create a four-person drug task force.

Half of the defendants in the La Familia case, also need
court-appointed attorneys.

David Lipscomb, chairman of the Gwinnett County Indigent Defense
Governing Committee, said each defendant is entitled to a separate
attorney to avoid a conflict of interest.

"When you've got two defendants on one case, one of them always says
it's the other one's fault," Lipscomb said. "You can't represent two
people when they're both saying that."

The bills from appointed attorneys won't be submitted until the case
is over. However, Lipscomb said an average criminal case costs between
$2,500 to $3,500. That could amount to about $75,000 worth of bills
from the 25 appointed attorneys in the La Familia case alone. That's
not a huge portion of the county's $5 million indigent defense budget,
but neither is it negligible, Lipscomb said.

There are also other hidden costs like the time and manpower to
coordinate courtroom space and court calendars, hear defense motions,
and shuffle defendants between the jail and the courthouse. Not to
mention the cost of incarceration.

"Our biggest limitation is going to be court time and court space,"
Porter predicted. "It's going to cause a big bottleneck in the courts."

The backlog in Superior Court -- which handles divorces, adoptions and
some civil lawsuits in addition to all felony cases -- has been
whittled down over the past two years from about 9,000 pending cases
to about 8,500.

"We're going to do the best we can to divide the cases in a way that
minimizes workload," said Superior Court Judge Tom Davis.

The sheer volume of evidence in the La Familia case investigation
presents a challenge for lawyers, too. The case includes 681 names,
1,667 telephone numbers, 202 financial accounts and 582 police reports.

Some defense attorneys question the rationale for indicting so many
people in the La Familia case. They say authorities cast too wide a
net at the outset, hoping to find defendants who would cut a deal and
testify against their friends.

That has not happened.

"What we're finding with these Mexican cartel cases is they are not
cooperating and they are demanding trials," Porter said. "They are
afraid that La Familia still has their families in Mexico."

Four women who pleaded guilty on Monday were not involved in drug
trafficking and had no criminal records. They were arrested because
they were staying in a house in Lawrenceville where methamphetamine
was being stored and manufactured. The women were sentenced to spend
11 months in prison under a Georgia law that prohibits the presence of
children during the manufacture of meth.

Defense attorney Richard Grossman represented one of the women in the
case, 49-year-old Rocio Perez. He said Perez's 12-year-old son and
five grandchildren were shunted into the state foster care system
while she and her daughters spent eight months in jail, all at
taxpayer expense.

"It seems like a funny way to spend money, unless you've got money to
burn," Grossman said. "What is the point of arresting all these people
that happen to just be there?"

Almost all the defendants in the La Familia case are illegal
immigrants with federal immigration holds, so they are ineligible for
bond.

Gwinnett County has seen an influx of drug traffickers who seek to
blend into its large Hispanic population and use its location near
metro Atlanta as a transshipment point.

But Gwinnett is not the only county handling prosecutions of federal
drug cases. Three of the La Familia defendants are being prosecuted in
Cobb County, two in Clayton, nine in DeKalb and four in Floyd. Six
others will be tried in Florida.

Jack Killorin, who directs the Atlanta high-intensity drug task force
, said his office is coordinating prosecutions with several local
judicial circuits. Gwinnett has a lot because the cases often
originate there and because Porter is a particularly aggressive
district attorney, Killorin said. The county has two federally funded
assistant district attorneys who were assigned there to help with drug
cases.

Another reason a case might stay in local courts is because the
warrants for wiretapping were obtained from local Superior Court
judges, which is quicker than getting a warrant from a federal judge.

Authorities have to move swiftly or risk losing track of dope dealers,
who are known to buy, trade and discard phones monthly to avoid detection.

Patrick Crosby, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Atlanta,
said Tuesday that "in general they never talk about what kind of cases
we take and why. "

Killorin said it's preferable for large drug trafficking cases to be
handled in federal courts, because stricter sentencing guidelines and
no parole make for harsher punishments. But the U.S. Attorney's Office
is juggling so many cases that is helpful to have local prosecutors
share the load.

"This is all fairly new as we've adjusted as a community to the
presence of the cartels and our ability to get in on them and make
these kinds of cases," Killorin said.

[sidebar]

BY THE NUMBERS:

The "La Familia" Drug Cartel Wiretap Investigation Is One of the
Largest in Gwinnett History

* 681 names identified

* 1,667 telephone numbers identified

* 202 financial accounts probed

* 582 police reports generated