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Fajardo to run for regional DA

Susan McCord

LEESBURG — A Lee County lawyer who’s taken on school systems and represented the indigent in capital murder proceedings has turned his eye to the district attorney’s post with the Southwestern Judicial Circuit.

Ray Fajardo announced his intention to run for district attorney Tuesday. He will face Americus lawyer Plez Hardin in the Republican primary this summer.

Fajardo and Hardin, who announced his plans last week, are the first to declare an interest in the position held by Americus attorney Cecilia Cooper. Cooper, who has twice been elected as a Democrat, has not said if she’ll run again for the post.

“I think we need to bring the Southwestern Judicial Circuit up to date,” Fajardo said. “It has no drug court, no mental health court, no pretrial intervention. These are things that need to be done to help the citizens.”

Though he’s represented clients in multimillion-dollar civil suits against both the Dougherty and Lee county school systems, Fajardo said his general, solo practice has consisted of 80-90 percent criminal defense work.

“That’s what I’ve been doing for 15 years,” he said.

Born in Cuba, Ramon “Ray” Fajardo was raised in Miami, earned a bachelor’s degree from Florida State University and then a master’s degree in International Trade from Eastern Michigan University.

After obtaining a law degree at Atlanta Law School, he got to know his wife, Judy, the daughter of a Lee County couple, and moved to the Albany area eight years ago. The Fajardos reside at their Paso Fino horse farm in northern Lee County, near Smithville.

Now, he said, it’s his time to run for district attorney.

“I’ve done research, and I’ve gone to the different counties and I’ve done my homework,” he said.

The Southwestern Circuit spans Lee, Macon, Schley, Stewart, Sumter and Webster counties.

Fajardo said he’s represented indigent clients, those who cannot afford to hire a lawyer, “all my career.”

He was appointed to defend Stacey Bernard Sims, accused in the 2005 murders of six Hispanic farmworkers in Tift County, and Darrell Anderson, accused in the 2007 death of Dougherty search-and-rescue commander Jack Camp, but later withdrew from both cases, citing the state’s failure to pay him.

“Stacey Sims I represented for a year and a half, but withdrew because they hadn’t paid me for six months,” Fajardo said. “The system is broke.”

The system is Georgia’s Public Defender Standards Council, which operates public defender offices in most Georgia judicial circuits but reaches into the community for attorneys to represent clients in capital cases and where its staff lawyers have a conflict.

Fajardo said in January the system allowed district attorneys “blank checks” to prosecute, while public defenders had little to spend on their poor clients’ defense.

As a prosecutor, Fajardo said he’ll “work diligently to prosecute meritorious cases,” but not “make criminals out of innocent people.”

He’ll also strive to reduce a “backlog” of cases awaiting trial, easing the cost to counties to house those prisoners in jails, he said.

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