The state of Georgia is not known for passing legislation that can actually reduce the amount of time served in prison for violent convictions. So prisoners in Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) custody are taking notice as word gradually spreads of House Bill 582, enacted in July. The Georgia Justice Project describes it as “the nation’s most comprehensive and holistic statute preventing survivors from serving lengthy sentences.” It’s also a quiet victory against the mandatory minimums driving the mass incarceration crisis that currently has GDC warehousing more than 10,000 people serving life sentences.
Better known as the Georgia Survivor Justice Act (SJA), the reform allows defendants to submit evidence of abuse or coercion directly related to their case in the hope of more lenient sentencing. It also allows for people already in prison to petition for resentencing to the same effect.
The vast majority of women in prison have experienced domestic violence, often during the events that led to their conviction. It’s inordinately common that women serving life sentences for murder convictions had been defending themselves from domestic or sexual abuse. Coercion into participation in a felony—like driving the car in a drive-by shooting—is common as well. The SJA stands to begin rectifying some of the unjustly long sentences for those whose circumstances of abuse or coercion were never taken into account.
For anyone convicted of a felony punishable by something other than death or life in prison, the SJA sentence range would be anywhere from one year up to half of whatever the maximum they could have been sentenced to previously. For felony convictions punishable by death or life in prison, the new sentencing range would be between 10 years and 30 years—but with the potential for exceptions.
“In the court’s discretion,” the SJA states, “the judge may depart from such mandatory minimum sentence when the prosecuting attorney and the defendant have agreed to a sentence that is below such mandatory minimum.”
In Georgia, the mandatory minimum sentence for a murder conviction is life in prison. The point of mandatory minimums is that they remove the judge’s ability to exercise personal discretion and consider individual circumstances of someone’s case. Yet here despite the revised mandatory minimum of 10 years, the law includes a way to circumvent that and give people even less time. A welcome crack in the inviolability of mandatory minimums.
The SJA also stipulates that such sentences can be further reduced through any avenue of sentencing relief that exists under the authority of GDC or the parole board. A life sentence could be commuted to time served.
Of course, prosecutors would have to be on board; local district attorneys have been making their displeasure known from the beginning.
The longer someone has been in prison, the more unlikely it is that new evidence can be produced, even if it was plentiful at the time of the conviction.
“The full context of the situation should dictate that sentencing should look different,” Wade Askew, policy director at Georgia Justice Project, said in January. “We should be able to go outside of the mandatory minimum … to tailor sentencing that’s more appropriate for the situation, if a conviction does take place.”
Georgia Justice Project was involved in drafting the SJA and is now representing people whose cases are potentially eligible, alongside Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Neither are taking on resentencing cases yet, but they expect to in early 2026. They’ll likely be inundated with far more requests for pro bono counsel than they have the resources for, from people who’ve been in prison years or decades and are struggling to draft their petitions.
Examples of previously overlooked evidence that could be submitted in a resentencing petition include records of having sought medical care or law enforcement assistance related to the abuse, or “the effects of battering and post-traumatic stress disorder,” or expert testimony “relating to the family violence, dating violence or child abuse.” The more time has passed, the more unlikely it is that these records can be produced, even if they were plentiful at the time of the conviction.
The SJA states that there “shall be a presumption in favor of granting a hearing on a petition … unless the court determines that there is a lack of circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness, an inherent unreliability of the facts asserted or a deficiency in the factual allegations in the petition.” Those things become easier to determine the longer someone has been in prison, too.
Still, word of the reform has been spreading across the system. Though like many corrections departments GDC is hell-bent on stifling communication between facilities, its affinity for constantly shuffling us all around does mean that information travels with us. Ironically the age-old vendetta against jailhouse lawyers in particular means that GDC is, through punitive transfers, helping to spread the news. And hopefully sow the seeds of litigation.
