ALT “It’s just been beyond sad to see,” said Atteeyah Hollie, deputy director of SCHR, which has advocated for improvements to Georgia’s indigent defense system for several decades. “What we are seeing right now is beyond the pale. And we can do better in our state. It’s a matter of whether we want to do better.” . . . . Hollie said Georgia’s public defender system was formed in part to address issues with piecemeal representation and it’s “frankly shocking” that state officials are dealing with the problem some 20 years later. She said the GPDC’s appellate division is supposed to serve as “a crucial check on illegal policing and prosecutorial practices.” “As long as we allow this system to continue the way it is, we’ll be condemning poor people and poor people only to the most unfair convictions and the longest prison sentences,” she said. “We have to have the same commitment to ensuring that people have good representation as we do to locking them up.