Practice Profile: At the Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR), Hollie has led a statewide charge to eliminate extreme prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders and has worked to protect the rights of indigent defendants in criminal courts. For example, in 2014, Hollie took on the Evans County case of Wilmart Martin, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 1991 for possessing 3.4 grams of cocaine. Through her work, Martin was resentenced to time served and released in 2015.
Hollie is part of SCHR’s right to counsel team, which seeks to protect the rights of low-income people facing criminal charges. In 2015, she and other SCHR attorneys obtained a consent order in N.P. v Georgia, which required reforms to the public defender system in the Cordele Judicial Circuit. This litigation caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice, which filed a statement of interest for the first time in a case about children’s right to counsel.
