A backlog of cases that arose during the pandemic is forcing Georgia officials to release suspected offenders from jail while they await indictment, CNN reported. 

Suspects not indicted within 90 days after being charged with a crime in the state are eligible for bond. The law leaves hundreds of defendants accused of crimes, some of them violent, free or soon to be released. 

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“We walked into an office with an excess of 11,000 unindicted cases,” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis told CNN. “In addition to that, we already had another 12,000 that were indicted and were working their way through the court system.” 

Willis said sexual predators and other dangerous cases are top priorities for her office, but there will be  four or five hundred defendants they “don’t make the clock on” who will be given a bond as mandated by the law. 

She added that her office was working “around the clock” to ensure murder cases were indicted by the September 28 deadline, assuring the public that no one charged with homicide would go free. A missed deadline would have made more than 50 murder suspects eligible for release. 

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“Today I am happy to announce not one individual in Fulton County will be released charged with the crime of homicide because of a lawyer or investigator failed to work up the case and failed to get it indicted,” Willis said on Wednesday, per WSB-TV. 

Court case backlogs have piled up across Georgia since the start of the pandemic, but Fulton County’s is the worst, with The Atlanta Journal Constitution reporting an estimated cost of $75 million and years of additional court sessions to solve the problem.