Seven months after his upset victory in the Republican primary, Robert Busbee will be sworn in Monday, Dec. 30, as the new district attorney of the Ogeechee Judicial Circuit. Previously a private practice civil litigation and criminal defense attorney, he becomes lead prosecutor in Superior Courts of four counties.

So, to make this transition, he had to give up his private practice, which he has operated in Statesboro for 10 years. He didn’t sell Busbee Law Group LLC, in which he was recently the only attorney but where he employed a paralegal and where his wife worked part-time as office manager. Instead, Busbee said in a Dec. 26 interview, he had completed his last trial and plea hearing as a defense attorney and turned over any remaining matters that might turn up for his practice to J. Thomas Howell, a Statesboro lawyer with a separate practice.

“I just knew him to be a good attorney and he was willing to do that, so I just sort of said, ‘Here, what’s left of my practice, my phone number and stuff, that’s yours now,’” Busbee said.

As district attorney-elect, he attended a two-day training session for newly elected Superior Court district attorneys and State Court solicitors-general put on by the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia, or PAC, in Peachtree City earlier in December.

His last trial as defense attorney had been as co-counsel with local attorney Gabe Cliett on a case in Johnson County back at the end of October and beginning of November. Then in early December, Busbee wrapped up his final local case, in which his client entered a plea.

What put Busbee on this trajectory was his challenge last spring to outgoing Ogeechee Circuit District Attorney Daphne Totten, who has served one four-year term as D.A. but had 20 years experience as a prosecutor. In the May 21 Republican primary, Busbee captured 10,169 votes, or 63% of the total across the circuit, to 5,975 votes, or 37% for Totten. That election saw several other local incumbents unseated by in-party challengers in Bulloch County.

Transitional visit

Toward a transition, Totten met with Busbee one day in November.

“Yeah, last month I got to go into the office and have a discussion with her and then walk around and meet everybody,” he said.

Before that, he had obtained financial reports and other information from the county and so had the names of the District Attorney’s Office employees.

“But, generally, I had only seen, for the most part, the people who go to court, and that’s not everybody in the office, so it was nice to put some names to faces and for them to see me and just sort of make an introduction before January,” Busbee said.

Actually, Busbee met the staff over the course of two separate days, one at the D.A.’s Bulloch County office in Statesboro and another at the Effingham County office in Springfield. The other two counties in the circuit, Jenkins County and Screven County, having much smaller populations, hold court less often, have fewer cases, and so are served by attorneys and  staff actually based at the Statesboro office, he explained.

Staff turnover?

One obvious question, after such an election upset – Busbee acknowledged in May that the scale of his victory was a surprise even to him – is whether veteran staff members are remaining and how much hiring he will need to do. Totten employed as many as 15 assistant district attorneys, in a total staff of nearly 40 people.

“It’s kind of mixed. I mean the chief assistant (district attorney) left, the next most senior guy stayed. It’s kind of a mix. …,” Busbee told the Statesboro Herald. “Some people left for various reasons, but for the most part they’re staying on. We will be hiring a few attorneys, but I want to get in there and see how things are running before I start (hiring).”

During the orientation put on by the PAC, he heard from one experienced district attorney who said that “if she could go back and give herself some advice from when she started, she would have told herself to hire more slowly, to be more thoughtful about who you’re bringing in and what you’re looking for,” Busbee recalled. “That kind of landed with me, so I want to be careful and thoughtful in that process.”

Asked whether that next-most senior attorney will become the chief assistant D.A., Busbee said any decisions of that kind will also wait until after he takes office.

“That’s the sort of decision I don’t want to make from the outside,” he said. “I want to be thoughtful, and you know I come  from a private sector background, so I want to pick the person that earned it.”

Conflicts of interest?

When defense attorneys become prosecutors in the same area where they have practiced, situations can arise where they have to be recused from a case.

Naturally, this was also discussed at the Prosecuting Attorneys Council training session.

“Interestingly, we were discussing that up at Peachtree City, and the same election that I won, the D.A. in the Dublin Circuit lost the primary as well, and the person that beat him had been in private practice for 40 years,” said Busbee.

That lawyer with 40 years experience was incoming Dublin Judicial Circuit District Attorney Harold D. McLendon, who in the Republican primary beat previous Dublin Circuit D.A. Craig Fraser, who had served in that office 20 years.

“So we were joking like, since we’re only about an hour apart, we’ll probably wind up just swapping cases,” Busbee said. “When I’ll have a conflict, his office will handle it; when he  has a conflict, my office will handle it.”

It won’t necessarily work that way, he acknowledges. But cases where an elected D.A. has a conflict are often reassigned across circuit lines. Nearly a year ago, Totten recused herself and her office from prosecuting a criminal case against a then-EffinghaCounty commissioner on the grounds that the Ogeechee Circuit D.A.’s office receives support from the four county governments in its jurisdiction and is involved with all of them. The elected Augusta Circuit D.A. then assigned one of that circuit’s assistant district attorneys to prosecute the case in the Ogeechee Circuit.

“But I don’t think it’s going to happen a whole lot,” said Busbee. “I had a lot of civil cases, and then it’s just sort of the nature of the beast here in Statesboro that a lot of the people you represent (as a defense attorney) are college kids who go back off to Atlanta metro after they graduate or it’s people who are first-time offenders and they get straightened out.”

The Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia offers assistance for when it does happen, he notes.

In fact, the PAC’s website, on a webpage labeled “Conflicts of Interest,” states that under a law effective since July 1, 2022, the PAC has statewide authority to appoint substitute counsel when a D.A. or solicitor-general faces a conflict of interest in a case. But it also states that other district attorneys and solicitors-general are “the main avenues” for such appointments.

Busbee expects Thursday, Jan. 2, to be his first day at work.

But he is set to be sworn in during Bulloch County’s main Oath of Office Ceremony for its elected officials, 10 a.m. Monday on the second floor of the historic Bulloch County Courthouse. Bulloch County Probate Judge Lorna DeLoach will officiate.