Robert Busbee, a Statesboro-based defense attorney with 10 years in private practice, and the experience that involves in running a small business, is seeking the office of district attorney for the Ogeechee Judicial Circuit, offering what he describes as different standards of success in prosecuting cases than the incumbent D.A. and an eye toward controlling costs.
That incumbent is Daphne Totten, now in her fourth year as the elected chief prosecutor in the four-county Superior Court circuit after 18 previous years as an assistant D.A. It’s a primary race on the Republican ballots in Bulloch, Effingham, Screven and Jenkins counties. The final Election Day is Tuesday, May 21, after the early voting opportunity concludes this Friday, May 17.
“You know the first thing – and this may sound kind of corny – but it’s service,” Busbee said when asked why he’s seeking this office. “As you know, I’m not from Bulloch County originally, I’m from Wayne County, and my wife is from Houston County, but this community has accepted us and allowed me to build a practice here, a practice – you know, a business – that supports my family now.”
Totten is originally from Tattnall County, so one thing they have in common is that neither is a Bulloch native, but they didn’t move here from far away, either.
“And … I’ve been looking at what’s been going on with that district attorney’s office for a long time, and well, …. I feel like they’re prosecuting people they shouldn’t, and with the people that need prosecuting, they’re not getting wins like they should,” Busbee continued. “I feel like they’re being wasteful with the money, which has – sort of coincidentally – become a big issue here in Bulloch County.”
Busbee first arrived in Statesboro as a Georgia Southern University student. Majoring in political science, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 2009. Then he went to the Georgia State University College of Law in Atlanta. After interning briefly with a law firm in Atlanta and receiving his law degree in 2012, he moved back to Statesboro and started his law practice here in 2014.
He and Erika Jordan Busbee, also a Georgia Southern graduate, have been married since November 2016 and now have two children, ages 5 and 1.
Now 42, Robert Busbee owns Busbee Law Group LLC. He is currently the only attorney in the practice. He employs a paralegal, and his wife also works there in the mornings as office manager.
He represents clients mainly in the state and superior courts of the Ogeechee Circuit and surrounding counties, but can practice in any of the Georgia courts. He occasionally takes a case into federal court, having been admitted to practice in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. He is a member of GACDL, the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Concern for costs
In support of his assertion that Totten’s office is being wasteful with money, Busbee observed that in the last three years that previous District Attorney Richard Mallard submitted budgets, the request to Bulloch County “hovered around $450,000 a year” and that the fiscal year 2021 budget, requested in 2020, had Bulloch County contributing about $463,000.
“And (Totten) went to the commission, I guess it was last month now and requested another $90,000 on top of the $150,000 they’ve already increased, which would put her budget next year at $715,000. They went up from, well, $450,000,” Busbee said. “That’s a quarter million dollars in three years.”
As he also noted, the state pays most of the salaries for the attorneys in the office, while counties contribute for operational costs and support personnel’s pay. Totten’s total requested contribution from the counties for fiscal year 2025 is $1.624 million, with the county shares, based on population, being 48.28% from Bulloch, 35.93% from Effingham, 10.04% from Screven and 5.74% from Jenkins.
Beyond the state-funded addition of an 11th assistant district attorney earned with population growth, Totten added four more (some part-time) assistant D.A.s with federal American Rescue Plan Act funds. ARPA grants have also funded five other added employees.
Busbee alleges that, with the added staffing, Totten and Chief Assistant D.A. Barclay Black are now “not carrying a caseload” but acting as managers and assisting and mentoring the other attorneys. Totten, who was interviewed first, wasn’t asked about this, but she did say that she now has two attorneys assigned to each courtroom, which she credits with helping to eliminate, mostly, a backlog of cases from the 2020-2021 COVID-19 shutdown.
“First off, I’m not going to retire from trial practice,” Busbee said when asked how he would control costs. “I’m going to be a working district attorney, like the district attorneys in a lot of our neighboring circuits. I’m going to carry cases; I’m going to carry the most important cases, because I feel like when you elect a D.A., you’re hiring that D.A. to personally handle the cases that are most important to the community.”
By “not … retire from trial practice,” he means he would become a full-time prosecutor, assigning himself cases as district attorney. If elected, he would have to give up his private practice.
Cases they shouldn’t?
When asked for examples of the D.A.’s office “prosecuting cases that they shouldn’t,” Busbee said, ““Well, there’s a few examples. You know one is the Jake Thompson case. I don’t think they should have prosecuted that one. Fortunately, the grand jury in Screven County corrected that mistake.”
That was the case of then-Georgia State Patrol Trooper Jacob G. Thompson, who killed Julian Lewis, 60, with a gunshot to the head after forcing Lewis’ car off a dirt road in Screven County when he failed to stop on Aug. 7, 2020. After the Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested Thomspon on a warrant charging him with murder and the State Patrol fired him, Totten presented the case to a grand jury, which “no-billed” the charge. Thompson faced no further criminal charges, but the state later agreed to pay $4.8 million to Lewis’ family in a civil settlement.
Busbee also noted a case involving a young man, accused of rape, whom he represented as defense attorney. The young woman who was the reported victim “had just gotten really drunk and the next day said, ‘Well, I don’t remember,’” as Busbee tells it.
But his client stayed in jail more than three years awaiting a trial, which lasted about a day and a half before the jury returned a not-guilty verdict. So the young man was released after “38 months” or “1,150 days, and I tell you what, it felt like I served a lot of those days with him,” Busbee said. “It was one of those that I just couldn’t lose, because that would live with me for the rest of my life, because rape is a 25-year minimum with no parole.”
Different ‘win’ counts
In regard to the D.A.’s office “not getting wins,” Busbee said he had been to the court clerk’s office to check jury verdicts from Bulloch County from 2021, 2022 and 2023 and would “put their win percentage at 44%.”
“I counted that per-defendant, so … for instance, there was a case where they charged four people with murder … two were found guilty and two … not-guilty. To me, that’s two wins and two losses.”
Totten reports an 84% conviction rate for jury trials in the Ogeechee Circuit overall. This includes convictions for lesser included offenses than those originally charged. For homicide trials, she reported a conviction rate of 92% circuit-wide and 93% in Bulloch, again, including lesser-offense convictions such as for aggravated assault and involuntary manslaughter.
“See, that’s one of the differences, I think, between me and her, what she considers success and what I consider as a success,” Busbee said. “I expect excellence. I mean, if you charge someone with murder, if you take it to trial, you need to get a conviction on murder, and if you take four defendants to trial, you need to get a conviction on all four. Otherwise, that’s not a win, to me.”
Busbee had some lean years starting his law practice and says he would apply the lessons he has learned about spending and budgeting.
“Even though I’ve found success, I still operate my budget the way I did when I first started,” he said.
He has never been a prosecutor, but he observes that Totten has hired attorneys out of the public defender’s office to be prosecutors.
“No, I’ve never prosecuted anyone, and I know she’s brought that up,” Busbee said. “In my opinion, that’s something you say to people who you think aren’t going to know better. She knows that when we try cases and when we have hearings, the defense attorney and the prosecution have to be present. We have tried cases together.”