Georgia Lawyer Spotlight
| Jurisdiction | United States,Federal |
| Citation | Vol. 26 No. 6 Pg. 0038 |
| Pages | 0038 |
| Publication year | 2021 |
A Conversation with Hon. Marc Treadwell, Tina Hunt and Peter Leary
In this installment of the "Georgia Lawyer Spotlight," Editorial Board Member Jacob E. Daly interviews Hon. Marc Treadwell, chief judge, U.S. District Court, Middle District of Georgia; Tina Hunt, executive director, Federal Defenders of the Middle District of Georgia; and Peter Leary, acting U.S. attorney, Middle District of Georgia, about their desire to work together to deter crime through the Armed With Knowledge Program.
BY JACOB E. DALY
Each of you is influential in the Middle Georgia community by virtue of the role that you play in the criminal justice system, so let's start with a brief introduction to our readers who may not know you.
TREADWELL: I'm Marc Treadwell. I am chief judge in the Middle District of Georgia and have been on this court since 2010.
HUNT: I'm Tina Hunt. I'm the executive director for the Federal Defenders of the Middle District of Georgia. We are a nonprofit organization that handles the representation of indigent clients charged in federal court in the Middle District of Georgia.
LEARY: My name is Peter Leary, and I'm the acting U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Georgia. I joined the Justice Department in 2007, and I became the acting U.S. attorney in December 2020.
Why do you have a passion for the particular job that you have?
TREADWELL: I will answer that as it relates to "Armed With Knowledge." Part of my job is sending people to prison. When the law calls for a long sentence, I impose a long sentence. And I firmly believe firm punishment deters crime. But as I have handed down more and more long sentences for crimes involving, sometimes only tangentially, illegal guns, I realized many defendants simply didn't know the consequences of possessing an illegal gun. OF course that's not an excuse. But wouldn't we all be better if we could reach people before they picked up that gun and let them know what they would face if they got caught with that gun? So I'm passionate about deterring crime; and what better way to do that than by preventing the crime?
LEARY: I'm very grateful that I've been able to spend my professional legal career seeking justice, and I've been fortunate to do that with Main Justice in Washington, D.C., and then at the U.S. Attorney's Office. Also, my wife and I are raising our four children here in Middle Georgia, and working at the U.S. Attorney's Office allows me to help make this a safer community for them and for everyone's children.
HUNT: I have been committed to criminal defense since the very beginning of my career in 1985. I truly feel like my job is not a job but a calling, and I have a huge responsibility to be able to give a voice to those who don't have a voice. Once you get to know the people that you represent, you see that a lot of times people are placed in situations they wouldn't have chosen to be in. I have seen the systemic injustice that the system is capable of, and...
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