Unusual legal aid group helps turn lives around
Bill Rankin - Staff
Monday, December 2, 2002

It's hard to say exactly when Will Smarr hit rock bottom.

Maybe it was the night he sat in a bathroom shooting heroin into his vein and the lights began to dim --- except it wasn't the ceiling lights going out, it was an overdose. Maybe it was when his wife kicked him out of the house for continually abusing drugs. Or maybe it was the time he shot and paralyzed a drug dealer who had sold him some bad dope, an offense that sent him into the Georgia prison system.

"There were times when I didn't care whether I lived or died," Smarr says now.

Drug-free for five years, Smarr is now a welder earning up to $45 an hour. He drives a shiny new truck, owns a new home and is thinking of buying another house as a rental property.

Smarr, 52, says there is no way he'd be where he is today without the Georgia Justice Project, a legal group in Atlanta that does more than provide free legal representation to poor people accused of crimes.

The nonprofit is an unlikely mix of lawyers, social workers and landscaping crews.

Georgia Justice provides legal representation and support often unheard of in the defense of poor people throughout the country. After being the only group of its kind in the nation for about a decade, public defender offices in Knoxville and the Bronx, N.Y., have adopted similar approaches, said Scott Wallace of the National Legal Aid & Defender Association.

In its most recent recidivism study, the Georgia Justice Project determined that about 18 percent of its clients are convicted of another offense after signing onto the program. The statewide average is about 39 percent.

When the Georgia Justice Project gets involved in a case, it's typically in it for the long haul. Even before clients are sentenced or go to trial, they are asked to commit themselves to turning their lives around. New clients are asked to sign a contract outlining what they are obligated to do, such as attending weekly counseling classes, enrolling in a drug rehabilitation clinic or taking classes to get their GED. If clients are sentenced to prison, members of the Georgia Justice Project will visit them in the penitentiary and be there when they get out. Many clients start out working at the project's New Horizons Landscaping company, formed to provide jobs to those on probation or just out of prison.

"Win or lose, we stand by our clients," Doug Ammar, the project's executive director, said.

Smarr understands that. He began serving the first of three prison terms in 1977 at Attica prison in New York, where he learned how to weld.

In 1989, Georgia Justice began representing him in the shooting of the drug dealer. During his stay in Valdosta State Prison, project members visited him and wrote him letters. After Smarr was paroled in the 1990s, he continued to struggle with his drug addiction, often succumbing to it.

When he got thrown out of his house, members of the project found him a place to live and even went to pick up his belongings.

"They always cared for me, even when I kept messing up," Smarr said. "I finally said, 'Lord, they are showing all this concern for me, so why should I keep destroying my life?' I've come up from out of the pit."

Founded in the mid-1980s, the project takes on about 125 new clients a year through letters and phone calls from jails or referrals from other lawyers.

Because of a limited staff --- which now includes three lawyers, four counselors, a social worker and a Jesuit volunteer --- the project turns away about twice as many prospective clients as it can accept.

The project will not accept cases involving child abuse, sexual offenses, domestic violence and large-scale drug trafficking.

The reasoning behind this is that to win a sex abuse or domestic violence case, lawyers often have to attack the victim, a tactic the project's lawyers prefer not to use. The project's founder also felt it was counterproductive to support big drug dealers who contribute so heavily to society's drug-abuse problems.

The project determines which clients to accept from interviews. "We want to know if we can make a difference, not only legally, but personally," Ammar said. "We want to know if they are open to changing their lives."

Ammar, 40, a stocky, former wrestler from West Virginia, says he was called by God to use his law degree to serve the inner city's troubled and poor.

Ammar's parents were divorced when he was young. His father, who never finished law school, was an alcoholic who was often unemployed. There were times when the household was without phone or electricity service.

"I feel this is part of my mission," Ammar said in a recent interview in his office, less than 100 feet from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s gravesite. "I feel like we can become the redemptive force in someone's life."

The Woodruff Foundation and the UPS Foundation have been important donors, as have leading members of the Atlanta legal community.

"Groups like the Georgia Justice Project fulfill the unmet needs of our communities with compassion and faith that can turn tragedy into hope," said Deputy U.S. Attorney General Larry Thompson, a former Atlanta lawyer and longtime supporter.

The project also has received support from local churches. Westminster Presbyterian hires out the New Horizons Landscaping crew, hosts dinners and donates Christmas presents for the children of clients now in prison.

John Pickens, a former King & Spalding corporate lawyer who founded the project in 1986, said he saw a need in Atlanta for a different type of representation for homeless and indigent people.

"Too often people get out of jail, and six weeks later they'd be right back in jail," said Pickens, now executive director of the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, a grass-roots advocacy group. "I felt like there needed to be programs in place, waiting for them, so they'd have a realistic chance of starting out on the right foot."

When Dwight Glass was released Oct. 4, after serving five years in prison for burglary, a Georgia Justice Project official was waiting at the gate ready to give him a ride back to Atlanta. Five days later, Glass was working on a New Horizons Landscaping crew.

On a recent brisk fall day, cleaning up the yard of a home near North Atlanta High School, Glass, 43, said the project's support has been a blessing.

"They've supported me all the way through," he said, noting that Georgia Justice officials visited him two or three times a year in prison. "Today, I have a life, and I'm working hard every day to get it right."

Smarr, the welder who just celebrated his fifth anniversary of being drug-free, does not take his freedom for granted.

"When I lay down at night, I lay in pure comfort," he said. "I don't have to worry about anyone coming in or knocking my door down. If the police ever show up, it's like, 'Why are you here?' "

Many people in the prison system are there because no one supported them or cared about them, Smarr said.

He said he finds strength from the support, prayers and love he has received from members of the Georgia Justice Project --- even after he fell off the wagon a time or two. "God knows," he said, "I don't want to do anything now to let them down."