A warrant naming 57 individual cases in which Lee County attorney Ramon Fajardo was appointed to serve as attorney for poor criminal defendants was executed at his Leesburg office Thursday afternoon by agents of the Americus office of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, according to Dougherty District Attorney Ken Hodges, who said he had been appointed by the Georgia Attorney General’s office to oversee the investigation.
The files listed by name on the warrant included cases for which Fajardo had billed Dougherty, Tift and other counties as well as work he’d billed the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council to perform, according to Hodges, who would not release a copy.
Thursday, GBI agents seized paper files as well as the hard drives to Fajardo’s computers, authorities said.
“The records will be taken to the Atlanta financial audit unit of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation,” Hodges said. “As soon as they have done their analysis, we’ll meet with them and decide what needs to be done.”
Russ Williard, a spokesperson for Attorney General Thurbert Baker, said Friday that the investigation was spurned by concerns shared by the council but wouldn’t elaborate as to the specific issues raised.
Calls to the organization’s executive director, Mack Crawford, where not returned Friday.
The council began handling Georgia indigent legal services in most Georgia counties in 2005.
Albany attorney Pete Donaldson, who has offered to represent Fajardo if needed, said Friday that Fajardo had no qualms about releasing the documents to state authorities, but that he has concerns that the files seized contain information that would violate the attorney-client privilege of Fajardo’s clients.
“We want to make sure that the information that is obtained doesn’t violate the trust and privacy of Ramon’s clients,” Donaldson said. “So we have to find a way to balance the concerns of the state to get the information they want, and the rights of the clients to have their information protected.”
In addition to the privacy of Fajardo’s clients, Hodges said that he’s concerned about the privacy of Fajardo’s partner, Craig Mathis, and will petition the court to appoint an objective attorney known as a Special Master to assist investigators in ensuring that only Fajardo’s files are inspected.
“They may share files or share computers and so, out of an abundance of caution, I’m going to ask that special master be appointed to assist in retrieving the information,” Hodges said.
Trebor Randall, the assistant special-agent-in-charge of the Americus GBI office, said Friday that the GBI’s role in serving the search warrants shouldn’t be construed as part of a criminal investigation yet, saying that Thursday’s raids were simply “to gather information” for state officials.
The council began handling Georgia indigent legal services in most Georgia counties in 2005.
Fajardo, who frequently represents the indigent, complained to the Herald last year that the state refused to pay him for work he’d done for a capital murder defendant in Tift County, forcing him to withdraw from the case.
Fajardo had announced his intentions to seek the District Attorney’s Office for the Southwestern Judicial Circuit currently held by Cecilia Cooper. But before qualifying week, he bowed out of the race.
Donaldson said that he hasn’t had time to delve into the complaint, saying that he’s unsure if it may be politically motivated.