Join us as we chat with Robert Busbee, candidate for District Attorney in the Ogeechee Circuit, which encompasses Bulloch, Effingham, Jenkins, & Screven counties.
Hear why Busbee is running, what he’ll prioritize if elected, and his approach to the job, the budget, and overall operations.
Learn more about Busbee’s campaign on Facebook.
Transcript of the video interview (Note: this is autogenerated):
Szilagyi: Today I’m sitting down with Robert Busbee, who is a candidate for district attorney in the Ogeechee Judicial Circuit, which is Bulloch, Effingham, Jenkins, and Screven counties. Thank you so much for joining us.
Busbee: It’s great to be here.
Szilagyi: Why don’t you just start off and tell us a little bit about you, your legal background, and just your ties to the area.
Busbee: Okay um I grew up in Wayne County originally. I came to Bulloch County I believe in 2006 to go to Georgia Southern University, left for I’d say about 3 and 1/2 years to go to law school and then prepare for and take the bar exam. Then I came back, passed the bar in 2012, became an official lawyer, but at the time they, you know, we were kind of in the tail end of the Great Recession so I just got an ordinary job and saved up money until 2014 when I was able to start a practice here in Statesboro. It was actually in my apartment on Zetterower Avenue. Around the same time that I was starting the practice I met my wife, not yet wife, I met Erica who’s now my wife, and we’ve been going pretty much ever since 2014.
We’ve moved locations, we moved out of the apartment pretty early on into a small office above The Daily Grind. We were there for about a year then we went to a somewhat larger office in the Market District and now we are at our permanent location on Grady Street across from the library. And my practice has been predominantly criminal defense and family law and in the last few years it’s been exclusively criminal defense.
Szilagyi: The District Attorney’s office is interesting because most people don’t interact with it unless they’ve either been charged with the crime or they’re an attorney, so why don’t you just give a little bit of perspective on how you view the office and what they do. If you become district attorney, how you would run the office and kind of segue into that.
Busbee: Okay, their role is a little more complicated I think than mine right now as a defense attorney. You know as a defense attorney, your obligation is just to your client, to do within ethical and legal means whatever you can to defend them. The District Attorney’s office has a dual responsibility- they have a responsibility to the state, to the community, and the taxpayers to convict people who are guilty of committing crimes against the community. But they also have a responsibility to the defendant to ensure that an injustice is not carried out, which is to say that they’re not wrongfully convicted and that their constitutional rights are protected. That’s something that would be very important to me to ensure that we get wins, we get more wins, but we do it correctly and fairly. We ensure that the defense has all the evidence necessary that they’re entitled to and that their constitutional rights are protected, which I don’t think is the current situation in that office. When you’re in the district attorney’s office, you’ve already really got an advantage in that all the people involved on your side are professionals from law enforcement to investigators to the attorneys. In my experience, a lot of the times, a lot of the damage to your case is already done when it comes into your office because your client isn’t a professional so I don’t think the state, if they’re if they’re being efficient, I don’t think that they need to put their thumb on the scale to win and I think most other circuits in this state are able to win while also you know adhering to the Constitution.
Szilagyi: You talked about the the role of the office but what about the role of the district attorney because people view that that job differently. And specifically, what should your day-to-day operation be? Should you be in the courtroom, should you be in the office, what is your job as the chief prosecutor?
Busbee: I mean I think you’ve got to be in the courtroom and in most of the other circuits I’ve been in, you know, particularly our neighboring circuits, you go to court even in the smallest counties you’ll see the district attorney in there working. I mean even if you don’t have a case load you’ve got to be in there. How can you properly supervise and know what your attorneys are doing if you’re not there at any point during the year? So yeah I would would certainly, I would be in court and I think any big like any major cases, you know I would feel like I need to have lead on and I mean frankly I would I think I would enjoy them. The big cases are usually the interesting ones and whether it was Marcus Wilson or Jake Thompson or gosh this death penalty case in Effingham County, the Crocker case. How can your elected district attorney not be front and center in that case making sure that everything goes right? But then in addition to that, I would want to work particularly with the younger attorneys and sit with them in trial and just, I guess, have a more Hands-On approach in the courtroom because that’s that’s where I’ve spent my time over the last decade and that’s definitely where I want to be when I get into office.
Szilagyi: You mentioned a little bit about supporting some of the younger or Greener prosecutors in trial, but what other types of things do you see as your responsibility in supporting staff because you can’t do everything.
Busbee: Right. So, yea, I mean I think you’ve got to be able to to trust and rely on the people that work for you. My my office is certainly much smaller than the District Attorney’s office but I’ve hired good people and it’s people I can rely on and so if I’ve given them responsibility to do something, I trust them to do it. I don’t believe in yelling and screaming at employees. I mean, and this is just me, I feel like if you know your relationship with your employee is such that you feel compelled to scream at them in the office, then you know it’s probably not a good fit and so I’ve never done that in my practice. And like you said, you’ve got to be able to rely on them, you’ve got to give them autonomy. I don’t want to micromanage their work, I just I want to guide them show them what I expect, and give them the opportunity to produce those results and this is from the outside looking in but I do kind of feel like those guys in that office are sort of put in a no- win situation. When you get a bad case, if you know if you make a reasonable plea you know you get yelled at and you know berated for that, but then if you take that case to trial, knowing that odds are against you and then you lose as one might expect you get yelled at for that and I don’t think that creates, I think that creates a toxic environment with the employees. I would want to give the guys in that office an opportunity to succeed, not set them up for failure.
Szilagyi: I want to, before we move on, I want to kind of dive a little bit deeper into that because you mentioned plea agreements and things and bad cases or maybe where a crime has been committed but you don’t have the evidence to prove it at trial or even for the the charges that they’ve been indicted on. How would you evaluate, I mean I know that you can’t just make blanket statements and say I would do this in these cases and I would do that in these, but what approach would you take to kind of say like this isn’t something I can move forward on.
Busbee: Well, it’s all evidence dependent. I mean, I can tell you I’ve never in the history of my practice looked at a case and said ‘well as a defense attorney, the evidence isn’t there but I feel like they’ve got better attorneys so we need to plea.’ That’s just not the way it works. You look at the facts on the defense side and I think on the prosecution side it’s going to be the same way. You’re anticipating what a jury will say and you really have to structure plea offers, you know, based on that. Based on how well, how strong you think your likelihood is of succeeding because I mean at the end of the day, if you take a case you can’t win to trial, you get nothing. You get a victim who’s not been satisfied, you get a community that’s maybe a little less safe. I don’t think it serves anyone to go to trial on a case you can’t win but it’s all evidence dependent. It’s what can we prove and I think to that end if you want to attack that issue, it’s not to keep forcing these cases to trial. I think it’s working with law enforcement and helping them understand like okay when when I see a case like this, when I see this fact, this is what it’s going to this is what’s going to happen in trial. If this happens we’re going to get this piece of evidence is going to be suppressed. I think the best way to handle that is to have a close strong working relationship with law enforcement in our four counties but really it’s all going to be evidence dependent.
Szilagyi: Do you see the District Attorney’s office as a check on law enforcement? Not in the sense that they’ve done anything wrong but perhaps when cases, where there’s not really a pathway for a plea or trial. Is there or could there be an instance where the district attorney stops the case from moving forward further or do you not see it how do you see that?
Busbee: Well yeah, sometimes I mean if you take say, take the it’s kind of ironic but if you take the Jake Thompson case for example and I say it’s ironic because he was law enforcement at the time but he was also the suspect.
Szilagyi: For people not familiar with the case, that was the officer involved in shooting in Screven county that involved a trooper.
Busbee: Right. Jake Thompson was in Screven County. He was a Georgia State Trooper,he was trying to pull over a suspect for a, I understand, was just a traffic violation. The guy refused to pull over and he was heading, it was at night, and he was heading towards a dangerous intersection there in Screven county and Trooper Thompson made the decision to PIT him before he got to that in that intersection. And you know potentially killed somebody. And when he PITted, him he got out of the vehicle and then in a matter of seconds the gentleman in the car tried to punch the gas and run him over. The GBI, I understand, looked at some of the evidence at the scene including the fact that when the vehicle was pitted the cables came off the battery and I guess because they didn’t know a lot about vehicles and electrical systems and vehicles they understood the car to be inoperable and it wasn’t. So they recommended prosecution of Trooper Thompson. That would be a spot where as district attorney you step in and you say no, I’ve looked at the evidence, we’re not going any further. You know it’s rare. I mean it’s going to be a rare situation but yeah to some extent yeah. I mean ultimately the buck stops with the district attorney. I mean, you’ve got to make a decision you know. You can’t let, like in the Thompson case, you can’t let the GBI tell you that you’ve got to prosecute this guy. You’ve got to make that decision. That’s what I believe, that’s from being a business owner, I mean in my office the buck stops with me. I make the decisions to answer your question on occasion.
Szilagyi: How do you answer any criticism or concern of people who say ‘well you’ve only been on the defense side’ so how will you know how to prosecute a case what what is your response to that?
Busbee: That’s something that sounds good in a sound bite but I mean ultimately we’re, both sides are working on the same case. I mean we sit in trial together. we watch each other practice, the standard of proof is the same, it’s you know we’re all working on the same cases. I’ve tried many criminal cases, I’ve negotiated a lot of criminal cases, I mean if anything, I would say I’ve got some perspective that you know my opponent and a lot of people in that office don’t have which is I’ve talked to a number of defendants. I know how they think, you know, I’ve got some I guess you could say insight into the tactics of the other side but as far as you know as if as if a defense attorney doesn’t know how to prosecute a case, that’s if you ask a defense attorney I think they would tell you that’s kind of ridiculous. It’d be like saying that you know someone who’s prosecuted cases can’t defend cases because they’ve never done it. I mean they do it all the time. I suspect when I win in May that’ll probably be her next job is defending criminal cases.
Szilagyi: So I want to talk about one of your campaign platforms which and you’ve kind of touched on it here but the conviction rate and why you think it’s problematic because you’ve kind of harped on your opponent’s results and also you have contradicted some of her statistics so do you want to maybe talk about both of those things with that they pertain to convictions.
Busbee: Yeah so, you know one thing in her stats she includes just broad conviction rate which includes pleas. As I said, pleas are dictated by the evidence and so if you’re going to give anybody credit for a high plea rate, you got to give it to law enforcement.I mean I can just tell you again, this is Insight from being on the other side, when you decide whether or not to plea, it’s completely almost evidence-based. It’s you know how much time are you facing and what is our likelihood to succeed at trial. I know me personally, as I said, and I don’t know any of my colleagues who’ve ever said well this case is hard they don’t have good evidence but the case is hard we probably better plea.Most defense attorneys are going to rise to the challenge particularly around here where we’ve got a pretty great defense bar in my opinion. Where your district attorney is going to earn her money or his money,it’s in trials, you know the cases that aren’t as cut and dry and that’s where I’ve see a problem with them having success and as you said our stats are different. You know I put her success rate, her office’s success rate in the three years she’s been in, at least in Bulloch County at 44%. I believe she puts it somewhere around 84%. I think that evidence is a difference a big difference in philosophy between the two of us. She’s willing to accept good enough. You know if you charge someone with murder say you charge them with murder aggravated assault um cruelty to children and speeding and you lose on everything but the speeding if she got that guilty on the speeding that’s going in the win column for her. I don’t consider that a win. You know whatever your top count is, whatever the most serious thing you charged, if you’re going to trial then that’s what you need to win on and if you don’t, Take you know the big Marcus Wilson case. They’re telling us this guy is driving down the highway, shoots a child in the back of the head, it’s just it’s murder. They go to trial, they get involuntary manslaughter and then they have this little press conference afterward like a like a victory celebration that justice was done. Well if that was justice, why was he charged with murder? You know I expect excellence and I think from being in the private sector you have to you know if you accept good enough as a defense attorney, you’re not going to be in business very long because people are going to go to someone who can provide excellence and that’s something I want to bring to this office.I don’t believe 84%, I don’t think the public would agree with that when they look at the outcomes of the cases you know. I mean the murder rate, the murder success rate just from the case of the trials here in Bulloch County that I found you know I put it at either eight or nine out of 17 rate. Rape, you know they lost five out of six and some of those even, you know, it was like the Chalkley case that I tried in 21. It was a single count so you know she can’t they can’t even paint that one as a win at all because there’s nothing, there’s no guilty plea to anything. I mean it’s just we’ve got to do better we’ve got to do better I mean one of two things is true when you go to when you go to trial and you don’t and you don’t win either you’ve prosecuted and incarcerated an innocent person and now the jury has set them free or you’ve failed to prosecute a guilty person and a jury has set them free. Neither one is a good thing for our community.
Szilagyi: I want to talk about bond for a moment because it’s been a really very well talked about issue in our community especially in Bulloch County. There’s a lot of moving parts to it of course it’s not all on the District Attorney’s office – covid, judges, the Magistrate Court – there’s lots of moving parts to it. However you would you have the option to oppose Bond and there seem to be blanket policies in place for those oppositions. Would you consider taking the same approach or do you want to take a different approach? What is your position on Bond and how will you approach that as district attorney?
Busbee: Yeah I don’t think a blanket approach is best. I think you you need to go Case by case, defendant by defendant, you know the state lays out four factors to consider. You know likelihood to flee, danger to the community, likelihood to commit another crime, you know these things are pretty easy to apply to a case and I think I think we want our criminals to serve their time post conviction if you can help it. Now some people you know I mean you’ve just got to hold them, you can’t let them out, they’re dangerous or they’ve got no ties to anywhere and if you let them loose, you’re never going to see, they’re going to end up in Mexico or who knows where. But you know broadly speaking I think we’ve got to take a look at this bond issue because it costs the taxpayers money to house all these people and then you’ve got these situations where somebody spends one two three four five years in jail only to be found not guilty by a jury I mean that’s ridiculous and even if the person is guilty like say it’s someone that is dangerous that we can’t you know that does not need Bond I mean we need to move these cases faster and they need to be a priority and I don’t think anybody should be sitting for a year and like you said it’s not it’s not completely in the District Attorney’s hands but the district attorney has got a lot of power there to rectify this situation.
Szilagyi: On the campaign Trail, there seems to be criticism that you’re not tough on crime because you’re a defense attorney that’s because that’s such a hot button topic for district attorneys in our state. We’ve got Sanctuary City District Attorneys up in North Georgia, we’ve got, you know, dismissals in Chatham County and they’re just trying to compare you I think to more liberal District Attorneys despite the fact that you’re running on the Republican ticket so do you want to just talk about like the perspective of being tough on crime versus how you see the job and how you kind of balance that act.
Busbee: Yeah I mean I think that’s a misconception about defense attorneys you know when you’re on the defense side you’ve got a job to do. I’ve described the criminal justice system as a three-legged stool – you’ve got the judge who’s neutral, the state on their side, and the defense on their side and if either one of those three isn’t doing their job to the best of their ability, you know the stool will fall over. That doesn’t mean that defense attorneys are pro crime and I think most people who know defense attorneys would know that to be true, you know you’re just your doing the job, you’re playing your part in the criminal justice system but yeah when I switch teams, then I’m going to provide that same zealous, you know, and hardworking mentality that I’ve provided to the defense, I’m going provide that to the prosecution side. You almost don’t know how to answer that. That’s a that’s a weird thing and I hope that’s not coming from the other side because that would be very disappointing if that was how, if that was how she saw us in the defense bar. I’ve never been called liberal before so that would be that would be odd. No, I’m I can just say I would I would provide the same rigorous work ethic that I provide now but it would be provided to the other side.
Szilagyi: In a nutshell, why do you think you’re the better candidate?
Busbee: Well for a lot of reasons. You know one is, as I just mentioned, my work ethic. You know you build a small business, I mean, if you ask anybody that’s done it, there’s no way to do it without working your tail off – weekends after hours, I mean particularly when you’re first getting started and your everything – you’re the attorney, you’re the office manager, you’re the IT guy, you’re the janitor. And even before I became a lawyer you know I did all kinds of entry level, I guess what you call Blue Collar type work. I’ll be there ideally I’ll be there before the attorneys get to the office and I’ll be the last one to leave. I also and this is kind of touching on stuff I’ve already said but Excellence. I think its required when you’re building a when you’re building a criminal defense practice because you’re dealing with people’s lives and they want the best and I’m going to bring that mentality to the District Attorney’s office as well. Good enough is not good enough. If you charge them with murder and this thing goes to trial you need to convict on murder. if you charge them with rape you need to convict on rape. This you know Middle Ground moral Victory crap, I don’t believe in that, I’ve also in the course of being a private business owner I’ve had to manage a budget. That’s something else I think is lacking in this office – the ability to work with what you got. It seems like every year she’s going back to the counties -give me more money give me more money give me more money. She asked for $90,000 more last week so when she took office just taking Bulloch County for example – the budget was Bulloch County’s share of the District Attorney’s budget was only 4 was 463,000 which is a lot for most of us but this year if they give her that $90,000 increase will be up to 715,000 just from Bulloch County and you look at the other counties it’s more or less the same way. Effingham I know is up about 150,000 already I would suspect another request for more money is forthcoming to their County as well. You know I, when you’re in when you’re in private enterprise, you’ve got the money you’ve got and you’ve got to make it stretch and you’ve got to make it work because there is no County to go to with your handout and say I need more. I know our taxpayers are hurting here in in this circuit and I’m going to be careful with their money. I know how to budget.
Hard work, ability to succeed, an ability to manage a budget I think are probably three of the the big things.
Szilagyi: And just before we wrap up, do you want to just tell people where they can learn more about you or find ways to reach out to you if they have any specific questions or they want to talk to you?
Busbee: Yes we’ve got a website BusbeeForDA.com and I spell my name B U S B E E. We’ve also got a Facebook page, I believe it’s the same Robert Busbee for district attorney. I think we’re on Instagram and about any other platform out there so yeah if you can reach us through any of those and and we’ll be happy to get back to you.
Busbee is challenging incumbent District Attorney Daphne Totten. Totten was offered an interview, but declined to participate.
Election Day is May 21st. Early voting begins April 29. Find information about your voting location and sample ballots by visiting My Voter Page.
