The Fulton County Daily Report has named Stephen Bright as 2003 Newsmaker of the Year. Stephen heads up the Southern Center for Human Rights and is a legend among capital defenders. This is a well-deserved honor. From the article (subscription only):

Stephen B. Bright - Angry Man of Indigent Defense
By Trisha Renaud

While powerful State Bar leaders and politicians worked the Capitol this spring to help pass a historic indigent defense bill, activist Stephen B. Bright worked the courthouses. As committees debated the details of a bill that would establish a statewide public defender system, Bright filed another suit-the sixth in which he and other prominent defense attorneys have demanded sweeping
changes in how counties provide legal representation for the poor.

This latest litigation targeted the four-county Cordele Judicial Circuit. The message was hard for legislators to ignore. Bright had spelled it out for them time and again: If the system doesn't change, he warned, he would keep filing such suits around the state. Or, as he said about indigent defense litigation at a symposium in 2002, "Coming to a courthouse near you."

....For his unrelenting efforts over the years to expose Georgia's shortfalls in indigent defense, Bright is the Daily Report's 2003Newsmaker of the Year.... At first, Bright may seem an odd choice for our Newsmaker of the Year. Others played equal, if not more prominent, roles in passing the legislation this year. ....But Bright's prodding over the years-some would say unrelenting agitation -was critical in bringing the issue to the fore. Sometimes with lectures, other times with pleas, threats or impassioned speeches, Bright was the most implacable and visible crusader for better legal defense for the poor. He brought a sense of urgency to the fight for reform, railing in speeches, letters and reports against inaction. To Bright, it was a battle to fulfill a promise made 40 years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court in Gideon v. Wainright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), that the right to counsel is fundamental to a just system. And he has fought to ensure that right over the years, with little tolerance for compromise. As he put it in a recent interview, "So many people talk about the minimum. Shoot for the stars, not the floor."