Fani Willis Calls Commissioners ‘Liars’ in Jail Funds Fight

As you walk into District Attorney Fani Willis’ office, housed on the third floor of Fulton County Courthouse, you’re greeted by a Malcolm X quote posted along the hallway. “I’m for truth no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it’s for or against.”

But she’s faced several tests on her ability to live up to the words from the civil rights leader’s 1964 “Ballot or the Bullet” speech. 

When Willis was first elected in 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Fulton County was awash in federal pandemic relief funds, millions of which were allocated to the justice system through a program called Project ORCA, designed to clear the massive case backlog and address the deadly overcrowding crisis in Fulton County Jail. As her second term began in 2024, those funds had officially dried up, and Willis, like many other department heads across the county, was forced to cut 74 positions from her office.

The result of these cuts has had a significant impact on those incarcerated in Fulton County jail, with the number of unindicted people rising.

Over the past month, the number of people held in the dilapidated and dangerous Rice Street facility who haven’t been formally charged with a crime has jumped by nearly 400. Many remain locked up simply because they cannot afford to post bail. As of mid-June, 106 unindicted people had been incarcerated for more than 90 days, with 26 detained for more than 180 days.

Capital B Atlanta received updated data from the Sheriff’s office June 6 showing there are currently 962 unindicted people in Fulton County jail and 263 have been incarcerated for more than 90 days..

Willis, whose office is responsible for bringing charges in these cases, has repeatedly said she and her team are constrained by a limited budget. The county’s purse strings are held by the Board of Commissioners, who insist they cannot match the funding level Willis is requesting.

“My opinion is that Commissioner Rob Pitts is a liar, Commissioner [Bob] Ellis is a liar, Commissioner [Bridget] Thorne is a liar, and [Commissioner] Khadijah [Abdur-Rahman] has decided to lie with them. They have decided that they do not care about humanity,” Willis told Capital B Atlanta on Friday.

“They’re paying in one way or another. You’re paying it either here so we can move the cases efficiently, or you are paying $105 a day to keep those inmates there.”

Criminal justice advocates like the ACLU of Georgia, the Southern Center for Human Rights and Women on the Rise, have called on the district attorney’s office to prioritize the most serious felonies and move quickly through the lower-level felony cases that can be adjudicated through accountability courts and diversion programs.

In January, Capital B Atlanta published a letter sent by Willis to the county’s Board of Commissioners threatening a lawsuit if her office was not sufficiently funded in 2025.

When the final budget was adopted weeks later, an additional $49,031 had been added to the $39 million budget, far less than the $7 million Willis proposed. The county commissioners have remained clear that unless they raise taxes — which they don’t plan to do — there are no additional funds for the district attorney’s office.

Read More: Fani Willis Interview Part Two: DA Defends Her Police Brutality Record

In a wide-ranging interview at her office with Capital B Atlanta, Willis makes the case for more funding, and outlines why she sees the YSL prosecution as a success, and why she won’t be seeking an appeal in the fatal police shooting of Jimmy Atchison. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Capital B Atlanta: You’ve been vocal about the need for more funding to address the unindicted case backlog. What would sufficient additional funding look like to support your department?

Fani Willis; We’ve been very specific. About $7 million would provide the additional funding we need. Seventy-four positions were stripped from this office, and that’s how much those positions cost. Those positions were 35 lawyers, 20 investigators, 10 legal assistants, and then the remainder went to other professionals that assist in the process, like victim witness advocates that made a huge impact on the work that we were able to do. 

In the letter you sent to the commissioners, you said, “For optimal efficiency, case intake requires 47 lawyers, 20 investigators and 10 support professionals.” What does the staffing level look like right now?

We have 21 lawyers in that division and we have 10 investigators. So we are way understaffed in every place, and it’s obviously affecting things. It’s really just math. In a typical month in this county, you get 1,000 new felony cases a month. Not to mention, that there’s always been a backlog. We’ve been able to kind of hold our finger in the dike, but we are not where we could have been if we had kept the appropriate funding.

Based on numbers from the sheriff’s office, the number of unindicted people in the jail has gone up quite a bit more recently than in previous months — 399 people. Is your office aware of this increase? And do you have any idea of what would cause this increase?

I told them that it was going to happen. And in fact, I think my prediction was that by the end of this year, we will be at 3,500. When I walked in the door, there were 3,700 people in the jail. The conditions were completely inhumane. At our optimal time, we were able to get it down to under 2,300 people in the jail, indicted and unindicted combined, which is the number that the jail has the capacity to [hold]. 

Once you take away the people [in case intake], then those cases cannot get indicted as quickly. It’s math. It’s stupid what the commissioners are doing. It is not good policy. 

Each inmate in the jail costs taxpayers $105 a day. In a matter of [30] days, they will spend close to $9 million. They could have given me $6 million. We would make the jail more humane, and the [indictment] process would go quickly. But instead, they’ve decided to have a backlog. 

What I am not going to ever do is go back to the way it was when I became the district attorney. When I walked in this door, there were in excess of 18,000 cases, between 2014 and 2020, that had not been indicted. Today we are at 8,000, so the cut has been huge, and we’ve managed to keep doing good work. But unless we get the funding, the number is going to increase.  

Each inmate in the jail costs taxpayers $105 a day. In a matter of [30] days, they will spend close to $9 million. They could have given me $6 million. We would make the jail more humane, and the [indictment] process would go quickly. But instead, they’ve decided to have a backlog.

Fani Willis

Given the ongoing crisis at the Fulton County jail, how frequently does your office make an attempt to utilize drug courts and diversion programs to move people out of the jail.

Before I took office as district attorney, there was no pre-indictment diversion program. I started the first ever in Fulton County, Georgia. We’ve had more than 800 people come through that program. So we use it often. 

Accountability court is very frustrating, because it is a wonderful program, and we have up to 400 seats. Typically, there’s only about 200, 220 people in it, but that is not due to lack of trying by the district attorney. You often have defendants who do not want to go through the rigor of accountability court, which is a shame, because the people that do successfully go through our accountability drug court, when they come out, they’re able to get a job [and] housing. 

We also have meetings monthly, and even more often, with our public defenders, where we can look at cases and make sure that people get bonds. But the reality is, citizens would be offended if they knew the people walking around on bond in Fulton County, because I believe judges feel pressure to give people bonds that have very egregious charges and criminal records that would make people fearful. 

Do you believe that there is anything that the DA’s office can do to address the unindicted backlog at this point, or do you believe that is all at the hands of the commissioners?

The district attorney’s office is doing their part. We are doing the work. We have worked with our police departments to make the system work more seamlessly, meaning it is easier for us to get evidence than it has been in the past. 

You hear the Republicans in the state saying, “We’re going to be tough on crime. We want to be tough, tough on crime,” but they have not provided the Georgia Bureau of Investigation with the scientists they need to move in an efficient manner. 

You can talk to any district attorney in this state, Republican or Democrat, and they will all complain to you about the rate with which they get evidence back. But what I’m not going to do is indict you if I don’t know. The police say this is cocaine, [but] until a drug lab says it’s cocaine, you’re not going to get indicted because I don’t have the evidence that it’s true. And often it’s not true, so we don’t do that, but that would be of some assistance. 

The district attorney’s office is doing their part. We are doing the work. We have worked with our police departments to make the system work more seamlessly, meaning it is easier for us to get evidence than it has been in the past.

Fani Willis, Fulton County district attorney

Senate Bill 63, that was passed last year, adding a number of charges to the list that are not eligible for signature bonds.

I don’t support that bill. You have people that don’t get involved in the criminal justice system making decisions. We know that part of our jail population is impoverished, which is why you see people not being able to make bail. But just think about how foolish that is. Somebody stole $100, and they’re in jail for two months. We’ve spent $105 a day. That bill makes absolutely no sense. 

I want to be very clear: Bond is only to ensure that you return to court, so people are, for the most part, entitled to a bond unless you’re a danger to the community. So I am a supporter of people getting a bond up until they are convicted at trial or convicted via a plea if they can be safe while they await their charges.

What’s your response to people who say expensive prosecutions against Trump and Young Thug’s RICO cases did not yield the expected results?

That’s incorrect, that they didn’t yield the results. The case against President Trump is ongoing, and it’s in The Supreme Court, so people should have the information to know what they’re talking about. 

In the YSL trial, Young Thug pled guilty to every charge in the indictment. If they are unhappy with the sentencing, they should address that with Judge Whitaker. 

The other reality is, of the people I indicted, 19 convictions. It was a successful trial. And if you don’t believe it was successful, ask people in my community who feel safe. My trial conviction rate, and I don’t play with the numbers, is 96%. I ask you to go across this country and figure out where you can find a 96% conviction rate.  

In the YSL trial, of all the people charged with murder, there weren’t any murder convictions.

People were convicted. They were convicted of aggravated battery. They’re doing serious time, they’re on paper for 40 years. It yielded a result that kept the community safe. My goal is to keep this community more safe. And you can talk to community members, they feel more safe because of the YSL prosecution.

Last week, we got a conviction against Ca$h Out, another rapper who’s going to jail forever. So to say that we’re not getting the convictions we want, or it’s not yielding the result, I beg to differ with you. If my community is more safe, that’s the result I wanted to yield.

This interview was updated June 6 to include updated data from the Sheriff’s office.

In part two of her interview with Capital, DA Fani Willis discusses her personal safety and concerns that her office isn’t seeking justice in cases of police brutality.