Slowly but surely, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office are making a dent in the county’s unindicted criminal case backlog, which totaled 16,300 cases when she entered office in January 2021.

Willis said about half of those cases come from both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, inherited from longtime DA Paul Howard, whom she defeated in the 2020 election. Some defendants have languished in jail for as long as two years awaiting trial, and others were released when the statute of limitations ran out or there wasn’t enough evidence to indict them.