As you walk into District Attorney Fani Willis’ office, housed on the third floor of Fulton County Courthouse, you’re greeted by a Malcolm X quote posted along the hallway. “I’m for truth no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it’s for or against.”
But she’s faced several tests on her ability to live up to the words from the civil rights leader’s 1964 “Ballot or the Bullet” speech.
When Willis was first elected in 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Fulton County was awash in federal pandemic relief funds, millions of which were allocated to the justice system through a program called Project ORCA, designed to clear the massive case backlog and address the deadly overcrowding crisis in Fulton County Jail. As her second term began in 2024, those funds had officially dried up, and Willis, like many other department heads across the county, was forced to cut 74 positions from her office…