Elizabeth Vila Rogan of Michael Kennedy McIntyre & Associates. (Photo: Rebecca Breyer/ALM)

A felony indictment charging an Atlanta criminal defense lawyer with forging a judge's name on a court order was based on the lawyer's belief that she had permission to sign for the judge, her defense attorney said Tuesday.

Elizabeth Vila Rogan was “merely attempting to clarify the status of a client's criminal history” with the filing of a three-sentence order that prompted the first-degree forgery charge now pending against her, said Rogan's attorney, Michael Moran.

“We believe the charge is predicated on a misunderstanding, a series of miscommunications,” Moran said. “The truth is that there has been absolutely no crime committed. Ms. Rogan has an impeccable record as a judge, prosecutor and defense attorney over 34-year career. … We look forward to the opportunity to address and resolve this misunderstanding.”

A Fulton County grand jury indicted Rogan on June 11 of one count of first-degree forgery. The indictment accuses Rogan of writing and presenting a court order on May 22 that included what was purported to be the signature of Roswell Municipal Court Judge Brian Hansford.

The indictment said that Hansford—who is also a partner at Miles Hansford & Tallant in Cumming—didn't authorize the signature.

The indictment stemmed from a complaint Roswell Municipal Court personnel made to Roswell police on May 22 regarding a “forgery incident,” according to the police report.

Hansford didn't respond to multiple attempts to contact him by phone and email. But he told Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard's staff that there was no misunderstanding or miscommunication underlying the initial criminal complaint to Roswell police, the DA's spokesman said.

Rogan was booked into the Fulton County Jail on June 12 and released the same day on a $10,000 signature bond, according to jail records.

Rogan has worked since 2017 at Michael Kennedy McIntyre & Associates, an Atlanta law firm that specializes in postconviction litigation. McIntyre couldn't be reached for comment.

Rogan served as a Fulton County magistrate judge from 2011-2012, and as an assistant Gwinnett County district attorney from 2016-2017, according to her LinkedIn page.

Rogan built her reputation in the 1990s as a criminal defense attorney with the Georgia Capital Defender Office, where she handled several of the office's high-profile death penalty cases. She repeatedly battled the imposition of the death penalty by calling out perceived disparities in sentencings in dozens of motions filed in death cases, according to news reports.

As a senior staff attorney for the Georgia Resource Center from 1990-1992, she handled appeals of 25 death penalty cases, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

In 2012, Rogan appeared as an expert witness in a landmark case brought by five Connecticut death row inmates challenging their sentences on grounds that minority defendants were more likely to receive a death penalty than white defendants, according to the Hartford Courant.

Rogan reviewed 25 years of Connecticut homicide prosecutions to identify cases eligible for the death, then provided her research to a Yale University professor who reviewed them for racial and geographic sentencing disparities.

Rogan earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago in 1981 and her law degree from Columbia University School of Law in 1985. She worked with the Legal Aid Society in New York in its criminal appeals and criminal defense divisions before coming to Atlanta.