ATLANTA — A revived attempt to fix Georgia’s inefficient system for compensating people wrongfully convicted of crimes almost died. Then it got tacked onto a bill that could compensate President Trump and more than a dozen co-defendants for attorneys’ fees after they were indicted for attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state.

The combined bill, Senate Bill 244, won final approval Friday, the last day of Georgia’s legislative session.

If Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signs it, it would let criminal defendants recoup attorneys’ fees and related costs in cases where a prosecutor gets disqualified and the case is dismissed. It would also establish a state law requiring an administrative law judge to award $75,000 per year of incarceration to people who have been found wrongfully convicted if they prove they are innocent of the crime or any lesser offense.

Georgia is one of 12 states without a law compensating people wrongfully convicted of crimes, according to an analysis by the Georgia Innocence Project. Instead, a lawmaker must sponsor a measure to compensate people and get legislative approval — a process plagued by politics that often leaves people without money, including five who tried this year.

The original half of the bill has a different backstory. Trump and 18 co-defendants were indicted in Fulton County in August 2023. Fulton County Dist. Atty. Fani Willis was disqualified from the case by a state appeals court for reasons related to a romantic relationship she had with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom Willis had hired to lead the case.

This is what led state Sen. Brandon Beach, a Republican, to bring forward the measure. Beach, a longtime Trump supporter whom the president recently named treasurer of the United States, has argued that the indictment was politically motivated.

‘Punitive politics’

The measure passed the Senate 35 to 18, and by a 103-61 vote in the House, with all Republicans voting yes.

The three highest-ranking Democrats in the two legislative bodies crossed over to vote yes — House Minority Leader Harold Jones II, Senate Democratic Caucus Chair Elena Parent and House Democratic Whip Kim Jackson.

But many Democrats were not on board.

“I understand some people have allegiance to the president and some people voted for him, and that’s their right. But do not force my constituents to pay his legal fees,” Democratic Sen. RaShaun Kemp said.

Democratic Rep. Shea Roberts on Wednesday called the bill a “disgusting display of punitive politics.”

“It puts legislators and voters in a moral straitjacket,” Roberts said. “If you want to support justice for the wrongfully convicted, you also have to support protecting powerful politicians from accountability. That’s not leadership, that’s hostage-taking.”

A longstanding push

The bill’s passage came the day after Republican Senate Majority Whip Randy Robertson held a four-hour committee meeting at 6 a.m. on a measure to compensate five people whose convictions were overturned after years of incarceration. By then, it was too late for that proposal to get a vote.

Robertson, a former sheriff’s deputy, has been the leading opponent against past measures to compensate people and to establish a law to let legal experts make that decision instead of legislators.

People seeking compensation this year have had convictions overturned based on findings such as DNA evidence, legal and police errors and the discovery of new evidence indicating they did not commit the crime they were incarcerated for.

But Robertson said people found wrongfully convicted aren’t necessarily innocent because convictions may be overturned due to technical errors. He also had doubts about whether some of the people seeking compensation this year were innocent. Still, he said the current method is flawed, and he decided to support this year’s bill to take the compensation process out of the Legislature’s hand.

Republican sponsor state Rep. Katie Dempsey said the bill will let the wrongfully convicted “have a true chance that is not a retrial from legislators.”

Democratic Rep. Scott Holcomb, who has championed the compensation bill for years, begged Democrats in both chambers to vote for a measure he called one of the few “incredibly consequential” bills he worked on.

“There isn’t a person alive who would trade the money that these individuals are receiving for what happened to them in terms of being locked up in our state’s prisons, for usually decades of their lives, for something they didn’t do,” he said Friday.

Kramon writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Jeff Amy contributed to this report.