In the three years and two months that Pareshkumer Desai has been detained pretrial, the only time he’s been inside a courtroom was when he was informed of his charges. He’s been offered no plea deals. He’s been scheduled and then canceled for court at least two dozen times. His public defender has never returned his messages. In early December, they met for the second time since their initial 20-minute meeting.
In March 2022 Desai was transferred to Troup County Jail in Lagrange, Georgia, where Christy is also currently incarcerated. Desai has sent dozens of messages—through the jail kiosks, by mail, via family members and with the help of other detainees—to the Coweta County public defender’s office requesting a meeting with his attorney, or some kind of status update on his case. Desai’s public defender, Jeff Shattuck, has never responded.
Any response from the public defender’s office is the same: They’re working on getting Desai an interpreter, and he can’t see Shattuck until they have one—even to get basic status updates.
Desai speaks Gujarati, and Troup County has yet to provide a Gujarati interpreter. Desai is potentially facing a lot of time, and it makes sense to not go to court without the interpreter. However, he does speak enough English to receive basic updates from his attorney, as he’s been requesting repeatedly since he arrived.
His attorney appears to have never requested the interpreter. Or rather, the right interpreter.
Access to the courts, including an attorney, is a constitutional right. Though the public defender’s office has said it’s not possible to give Desai this access without the interpreter, his attorney appears to have never requested the interpreter. Or rather, the right interpreter.
“I have never received a request for a Gujarati interpreter for Mr. Desai, but I have received requests for Hindi interpreters and they have been provided at least three times since 2022,” Court Services Director Lindsay Mobley told Filter. “We currently have an interpreter scheduled for him this Friday, which will make the fourth time he has received the assistance of an interpreter in Troup County. The assertion that [he] remains in jail waiting for an interpreter that he has never received is incorrect.”
That he had a meeting with an interpreter in two days’ time was news to Desai. A week earlier he’d been notified of a possible meeting by Julie Cirillo, the investigator in the public defender’s office, but heard nothing since.
Desai has been taken to the courthouse three times since 2022, and it’s entirely possible that the court did provide interpreter assistance each of those times. But it’s not possible that he received it, because he never actually made it inside the courtroom, and because Gujarati is not Hindi. Desai speaks a little Hindi, and conversations with Filter have been facilitated by another detainee who speaks enough Hindi that he and Desai can muddle through. But for court purposes, the county might as well just address him in English.
“It just so happens that I have a scheduled meeting with Mr. Desai tomorrow morning with an interpreter,” Shattuck told Filter the following day. “Thank you for the interest in his case.” He did not otherwise respond to Filter’s inquiries.
It’s unusual for prosecutors not to offer some kind of plea deal. The first offer is usually bad so you wait it out until they come back with a second offer, but after three-plus years of waiting Desai was likely going to accept the first offer whatever it was. Instead, at the Friday meeting where he was provided an interpreter for the wrong language, he was told that they’re looking to go to trial in February. Shattuck did not respond to Filter’s inquiry about whether he intended to request a Gujarati interpreter or whether the trial would conceivably go forward without one.
In September the district attorney offered Spillers a plea deal, but he didn’t find out until early December.
Dustin Spillers, who has facilitated conversations with Desai in Hindi, has been in Troup County Jail pretrial for 23 months. Since his initial hearing in February 2023, he’s been taken back to the courthouse at least half a dozen times but only made it inside a courtroom once, for a bond hearing in November 2023. As of August 2024, Shattuck is his public defender, too. He has yet to make contact.
In September the district attorney offered Spillers a plea deal, but he didn’t find out until early December. When the plea was relayed December 4 by Cirillo, the public defender investigator, he understood it to mean he was being offered life with the possibility of parole after 25 years. This is highly unlikely, as Georgia does not consider lifers eligible for parole until they’ve served at least 30 years. It’s more likely he was being offered two separate sentences that would run concurrently. But he still doesn’t know.
Spillers has requested, twice, that Shattuck file a motion to effectively reduce his bond so that he can wait for his court date at home. The motion has still not been filed.
“I’ve been locked away and forgotten, along with so many others,” Spillers told Filter. “It’s heartbreaking and irreparable damage that has been done to my family and to me, all of which could have been avoided … at the very least, move my case along.”
He’s lost two loved ones while he’s been in jail and unable to bond out. His grandmother’s health is failing, and she can’t see or hear well enough to visit him or use the phone.
In Christy’s 40-person dorm, there are at least 15 people who’ve been waiting over a year to get inside a courtroom.
Spillers is fluent in several languages, and can get by in several more besides Hindi. Over the past 23 months, he’s facilitated discussions for a lot of people’s cases, not just Desai’s. He’s noticed that often people wait around 15 months for their first plea offer, and between two to two-and-a-half years for a hearing where they can either accept a plea or go to trial. They may get taken to court plenty of times before then, but their cases don’t actually get seen.
Cody Watson has been detained in Troup County Jail for the past 19 months, and gotten inside a courtroom once. His public defender is not Shattuck, but is no more reachable.
“I’m from a small town, everybody knows me,” Watson told Filter. “If they didn’t think I was guilty before, because of how long I’ve been here I know they think I’m guilty now.”
While he’s been locked up, his fiancee gave birth to their daughter, and he still hasn’t been able to hold her. His grandmother nearly lost her house now that he’s been unable to help with the bills for so long. His sister had to sell her house instead.
In Christy’s 40-person dorm, there are at least 15 people who’ve been waiting over a year to get inside a courtroom. Most don’t meet with their public defender more than once. A lot of them don’t know even their public defender’s name.
Four public defenders and three judges means an inevitable backlog, but almost everyone in custody who spoke to Filter described inordinate barriers to accessing the courts and the county’s indifference to the problem. Spillers said that when Cirillo was discussing Desai’s case with him December 4, she asked him if they could even be sure Desai can’t speak English. Cirillo, Coweta County Judicial Circuit District Attorney John Herbert Cranford Jr., and Troup County Solicitor Sandra Taylor did not respond to requests for comment.
“This county take my whole life, my business, my future, my children, my family,” Desai told Filter. “I been jail 37 months without guilty. This county don’t care about people. They only care about money. This not justice.”
Image via State of Connecticut Judicial Branch
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