Buckner-Webb et al. v. Georgia
Annotate this CaseThe Georgia Supreme Court granted certiorari in this case to determine whether a trial court’s order denying a motion to withdraw as counsel based on alleged conflicts of interest was immediately appealable under the collateral order doctrine. Defendants Diane Buckner-Webb, Theresia Copeland, Sharon Davis-Williams, Tabeeka Jordan, Michael Pitts, and Shani Robinson were indicted by a grand jury, along with 35 other educators and administrators of the Atlanta Public Schools (“APS”), for conspiracy to violate the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (“RICO”) Act and other crimes arising out of their alleged participation in a conspiracy to alter students’ standardized test scores. Of the 35 indicted, 12 APS employees, including Defendants, were tried together between August 2014 and April 2015. In April 2015, the jury found Defendants and five others guilty of at least one count of conspiracy to violate the RICO Act. In April and May 2015, Defendants moved for a new trial through their respective trial attorneys. Despite the fact that each Defendant was represented by a separate attorney at trial, the Circuit Public Defender appointed only one attorney, Stephen R. Scarborough, to jointly represent Defendants as appellate counsel, and he formally entered an appearance on Defendants’ behalf on April 26, 2017. More than two years after Scarborough’s appointment as appellate counsel for Defendants and around the time Defendants’ particularized motions for new trial were due for filing, Scarborough filed a “Motion for Rule 1.7[1] Determinations” to address alleged conflicts of interest arising from his joint representation of Defendants. Scarborough also filed a motion to withdraw as counsel based upon this conflict of interest. The Georgia Supreme Court concluded that such orders did not fall within “the very small class” of trial court orders that were appealable under the collateral source doctrine, and thus affirmed the Court of Appeals’ decision in Buckner-Webb v. State, 360 Ga. App. 329 (861 SE2d 181) (2021), but for different reasons.
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