ATHENS, Ga. — As more details about Laken Riley's death come to light, the decision by Athens Clarke County’s District Attorney, Deborah Gonzalez, to bring in outside counsel to assist -- likely was a practical one.
11Alive investigates has spent more than a year tracking the staffing shortages and its impact on cases in Clarke and Oconee Counties, which make up the Western Judicial Circuit.
The office has been budgeted for 17 total assistant district attorneys, or ADAs. When we spoke to Gonzalez in January, the office had five.
That number has now dwindled to just three.
On Monday night, her office announced that experienced trial attorney Sheila Ross had agreed to lead the case against Jose Antonio Ibarra - charged with murdering 22-year-old Laken Riley. Her body was found on the University of Georgia's campus on Feb. 22.
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11Alive investigates started tracking cases in Athens Clarke and Oconee counties in 2022, after receiving emails from viewers concerned serious charges were being dismissed.
Shortly after, a local attorney filed a lawsuit, called a writ of mandamus, accusing Gonzalez of failing to do her job.
“I’m looking at the evidence of how she indicts, how she dismisses, how she chooses to prosecute… and it is not good,” said attorney Kevin Epps who filed the lawsuit on behalf of a local business owner.
Community members voiced frustration at council meetings and town halls and even judges within the circuit expressed concerns with the office's “lack of preparation and/or failure to follow proper procedures.”
While Gonzalez declined to comment on camera Tuesday about her decision to request a special prosecutor to help prosecute Ibarra, or the problems within her office, she has consistently blamed poor pay.
"It starts with the money and then led to the stress of having too many cases when you are one of the few who are left behind," Gonzalez told 11Alive's Rebecca Lindstrom in a previous interview.
11Alive has seen a shortage of prosecutors across the state - although not to this extent - and there's an effort among some lawmakers to increase salaries for those serving in state positions.
Athens Clarke County did conduct a salary study in 2023 and as a result, gave those in county positions pay increases.
Last year 11Alive tracked all felony cases in Athens Clarke County that went to trial in 2023. It discovered her office lost nearly 60 percent of them.
Gonzalez, herself, didn't win any.
Charges in these cases included kidnapping, murder, and aggravated sodomy - all gone.
"My caseload is 870 cases," Gonzalez told 11Alive's Rebecca Lindstrom last year.
"That's impossible," Lindstrom said back.
"Yes," Gonzalez agreed, noting that the caseload for any prosecutor would be unsustainable.
Gonzalez has reached out more than two dozen times for help from Georgia's prosecuting attorneys council.
Most of the requests don’t say why – but two were related to Marsy’s Law violations – cases where the DA was found guilty of violating the victim's rights. One case involved a father accused of raping his teen daughter.
"He was a lot of times asking her to come into our home office with him and if she didn't respond he would ask her to delete the messages," the teen's mother told 11Alive.
The DA's announcement on X, formerly known as Twitter, to again lean on outside help seemed to stir another round of criticism that the office was ill-equipped to keep the community safe.
"If I don't have the money and the resources that I need to get the right aides in there, I'm not going to be able to make sure that our community is safe," she told 11Alive in a previous interview.
Gonzalez says she's proud of her staff - and that politics has unfairly put her office under a microscope.
The lawsuit against her is tied up the in Court of Appeals, where a judge must decide if the writ of mandamus is even the proper tool to fix the complaints alleged.
In the meantime, this is an election year, in which she is asking the community for the opportunity to continue serving as DA.