Unusual legal aid group helps turn lives around
__Atlanta Journal Constitution__%%%
Bill Rankin - Staff%%%
Monday, December 2, 2002
It's hard to say exactly when Will Smarr hit rock bottom.
Maybe it was the night he sat in a bathroom shooting heroin into his vein and the lights began to dim --- except it wasn't the ceiling lights going out, it was an overdose. Maybe it was when his wife kicked him out of the house for continually abusing drugs. Or maybe it was the time he shot and paralyzed a drug dealer who had sold him some bad dope, an offense that sent him into the Georgia prison system.
"There were times when I didn't care whether I lived or died," Smarr says now.
Drug-free for five years, Smarr is now a welder earning up to $45 an hour. He drives a shiny new truck, owns a new home and is thinking of buying another house as a rental property.
Smarr, 52, says there is no way he'd be where he is today without the Georgia Justice Project, a legal group in Atlanta that does more than provide free legal representation to poor people accused of crimes.
read the complete article here: