This murder case, in which the State seeks the death penalty, returns to us for a second pre-trial appeal in which we must address the consequences of a financially strained indigent defense system operating within a recession-era State budget. In Phan v. State , 287 Ga. 697 699 SE2d 9 2010 “Phan I “, we vacated a prior trial court order and remanded the case for a more comprehensive analysis as to Appellant Khahn Dinh Phan’s claim of a constitutional speedy trial violation, grounded in his assertion of a “systemic breakdown” in the public defender system. The trial court having complied with this directive, Phan now appeals the resulting order in which the trial court denied Phan’s speedy trial claim and ordered the replacement of his appointed private attorneys with salaried counsel from the capital defender’s division of the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council “GPDSC”.1 For the reasons set forth below, we conclude that the trial court properly denied Phan’s motion to dismiss on speedy trial grounds and did not abuse its discretion in replacing Phan’s counsel. As set forth in Phan I , on December 29, 2004, Hung Thai and his two-year-old son were murdered “execution style” by gunshots to the back of the head. Hung’s wife, Hoangoah Thai, was also shot in this manner, but she survived. After waking up from a seven-week coma, Hoangoah left for Vietnam, her family’s native country. When interviewed by Georgia detectives over the telephone, Hoangoah identified Phan as the person responsible for the shootings. Id. at 697-698. Phan was arrested in March 2005 and indicted in September 2005. In October 2005, the State filed its notice of intent to seek the death penalty. Attorney Christopher W. Adams, then the Director of the Office of the Georgia Capital Defender,2 filed an entry of appearance on Phan’s behalf in January 20063; attorney Bruce Harvey, who was originally retained in the case prior to the filing of the death notice, has remained as Adams’ co-counsel.4 Phan’s first Unified Appeal hearing was held in February 2006. The State produced its discovery materials in October 2006, and the defense filed more than 50 pretrial motions in November 2006; that same month, the trial court entered an order removing the case from the trial calendar until all pretrial motions had been heard and resolved.
In December 2007, defense counsel submitted a written request to the Capital Defender’s Office for authorization of funds for the defense team —including both attorneys, a mitigation specialist, and a translator —to travel to Vietnam for investigation both as to guilt/innocence and mitigation. In January 2008, funds for the trip were approved in part, allowing for only one attorney to make the trip; this decision was apparently in accordance with a recently adopted GPDSC policy limiting funding for out-of-state mitigation travel to a single attorney per case. Believing that both attorneys were necessary to conduct a sufficient investigation in Vietnam, the defense deferred its travel plans and alerted the trial court to their problems in funding the trip.
