A case that drew international news coverage and criticism for having ever gone to trial the first time has now been resolved without a second trial in a way that both prosecutor and defense attorney said it should have been handled from the start.

After waiting two years for the conclusion of unsuccessful appeals of her conviction for vehicular homicide and reckless conduct in the death of her 4-year-old son hit by a drunken driver, Raquel Nelson has pleaded no contest to jay walking and paid a $200 fine in Cobb County State Court.

“This was a case that should not have been brought, or should have been handled in a very cursory manner as for a traffic offense like jay walking and not with the threat of jail time looming,” said Nelson’s pro bono defense attorney Steve Sadow.

Sadow took over Nelson’s defense after she was convicted in July 2011 of vehicular homicide and reckless conduct because she crossed the street from a bus stop to her apartment with her children and other passengers instead of walking nearly half a mile to a traffic light. Her son was killed by a speeding drunk driver.

“We had always offered a plea similar to the one she entered today where we would dismiss the VH charge,” Cobb County Solicitor General Barry Morgan said by email in response to an inquiry. But, he added, “She wouldn’t accept any plea at all before. She didn’t think she had any responsibility at all. We thought then and now that this was an appropriate resolution. She finally accepted the responsibility for what she had done, crossing the road not in a cross walk.”

Sadow said the offer presented before he became involved always involved probation, community service and fines more in line with a vehicular homicide charge than a jay walking charge. What’s important about the today’s plea – the product of an agreement reached just a few weeks ago – was that Nelson will have no probation and therefore no lingering reminders of her son’s tragic death.

“When I got involved, my priority was to make sure she did not have responsibility for vehicular homicide or reckless conduct dealing with the death of her son,” Sadow said. “The way I explained it to her was, every time we walk back into a courtroom, you have to relive this entire situation. It’s not in your interest to do that when you can put an absolute end to it by pleading no contest to jay walking and paying a $200 fine.”

The Georgia Court of Appeals is looking for a replacement for Holly Sparrow, who is retiring as the court’s clerk and court administrator.

According to a notice on the court’s website, applications must be submitted by email to coarecruit@gaappeals.us by June 24. Applicants must have been a member of the Georgia Bar for at least seven years, and the notice says the court also wants management and information technology experience.

Sparrow has been the court’s clerk since 2010. A Court of Appeals staffer since 2001, Sparrow previously was deputy court administrator and a law clerk to now-retired Judge G. Alan Blackburn.

Before that, she worked for the Administrative Office of the Courts.

The salary range for the job is listed at $90,000 to $120,000. More information can be found here.

A federal jury in Atlanta has awarded a female employee of  Exel Corp. $500,000 after determining that the company denied her a promotion because she was a woman, the Atlanta office of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced today. Read more »

The U.S. Justice Department today issued new guidelines governing legal fees and costs for lawyers handling bankruptcy reorganization cases involving $50 million or more in assets and $50 million or more in liabilities.

The new rules appear aimed at preventing lawyers  from padding their bills at the expense of the bankruptcy petitioners or their creditors.
They also are intended to promote greater transparency in public bankruptcy filings.

The new guidelines state that they are intended to insure that bankruptcy attorneys “are “subject to the same client-driven market forces, scrutiny, and accountability as professionals in non-bankruptcy engagements” and that all compensation for legal fees and costs “is reasonable and necessary, particularly as compared to the market measured both by the applicant’s own billing practices for bankruptcy and non-bankruptcy engagements and by those of other comparable professionals.”

The new guidelines say that bankruptcy trustees will ordinarily object to legal fees that are above the market rate for comparable services.

Read more »

A dispute between environmentalists and Jekyll Island’s governing board over how much of the southeast Georgia island may be developed is calling upon state Attorney General Sam Olens to weigh in.

The Jekyll Island Authority, which oversees conservation and development on the island, has asked Olens for an opinion defining marsh that is not flooded by an average high tide as land that may be developed, according to an article published June 8 in the Florida Times-Union.

Authority spokesman Eric Garvey told the Times-Union that the authority wants to continue using development plans crafted in 1973.

But the Center for a Sustainable Coast argues that the 1971 statute establishing the state park and its governing authority mandates that 65 percent of the island must remain untouched. Deeming high marsh to be land would render 595 additional acres ripe for construction, the center’s executive director, David Kyler, told the Florida newspaper.

GreenLaw, an environmental law agency in Atlanta, also is opposed to the authority’s definition, saying it could impact other protected marshes in Georgia.

Federal law enforcement agents have arrested an AirTran baggage handler at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and charged him with using his credentials to bypass airport security with backpacks containing what he believed were drugs and guns onto commercial flights, the U.S. Attorney for Georgia’s Northern District announced today.

A federal Homeland Security agent called Stone Mountain resident Rasondo Maurice Norris a “significant security threat” who abused his access to secure areas of the airport for “simple greed.” Norris has been charged with attempting to possess cocaine with the intent to distribute.

Agents with the U.S Department of Homeland Security, acting undercover, recruited Norris to bypass security with backpacks he believed contained multiple kilos of cocaine and guns after they heard the baggage handler was willing to smuggle contraband onto commercial airliners for a fee. Federal authorities have detailed the basis for the charges in a news release.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Atlanta has sued  T-Mobile USA, saying that the telecommunications company engaged in religious discrimination when it fired a new employee rather than accommodate her religious belief that she cannot work on the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.

T-Mobile had hired Melonie Holmes in December 2011  as a customer service representative at the company’s Augusta call center and required her to undergo eight weeks of training.  It discharged her when she asked that she be allowed not to work on three training days that were scheduled on her Sabbath, even though she offered to make up the training days, according to the EEOC. Holmes, according to the suit, has been a member of the Philadelphia Church of God for 15 years.

The first five weeks of training took place from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. The last three weeks of training were scheduled from Tuesday through Saturday from 9 a.m to 6 p.m. according to the suit.

Read more »

The same day the Atlanta Journal-Constitution posted a story online concerning Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard’s use of tens of thousands of dollars in seized money for office parties, football tickets, charitable donations and other apparently non-law enforcement related expenditures, Howard called a press conference to defend the spending and to address one specific expenditure: wrought-iron security doors installed at his home.

Howard said that a media crew’s efforts to videotape the doors at his home earlier in the day had “crossed the line,” compromising his security and placing his family at risk.

According to the story, Howard’s office spent $2,800 on the doors last year, and another $5,700 on a camera system and other security measures.

Friday afternoon, standing before a knot of reporters and cameras in the portico of the Fulton County Justice Tower as a light rain fell, Howard said that he had provided the media “hundreds of documents” and made himself and his office available for hours of questioning concerning the spending, which he characterized as “money from criminals, particularly drug pushers, not taxpayer dollars.”

After defending the spending as valuable community outreach and in line with established guidelines for spending forfeited funds, Howard turned to the security doors. Howard said he and his staff are frequent targets of threats, and read from a 2010 letter from inmate at the Fulton County Jail warning that there would be two failed assassination attempts on his life, “but the third one will be completed.”

He also read from a 2005 email signed by “The Man That’s Going to Kill You,” and said that earlier this year the FBI and Atlanta Police had warned him that a gang had put out the word to “whack” one of his senior attorneys.

Read more »

The FBI in Atlanta is seeking the public’s help in identifying the person responsible for defacing the Islamic Center of North Fulton in Alpharetta.

Alpharetta police called to the Islamic Center shortly after midnight on Memorial Day discovered that the center’s sign on Rucker Road had been painted with the words, “London Justice” and “Where is Justice.”

The reference is likely to the slaughter of a British soldier in broad daylight on a London Street on May 22 by two men wielding a meat cleaver, knives  and a machete.  A passerby recorded  one of the perpetrators — still holding a meat cleaver in blood-drenched hands —  as he took responsibility for the slaying as retaliation for the deaths of Muslims he claimed had been killed by British soldiers.

According to the FBI, witnesses said they saw a white male, 50-60 years old, with a paint bucket and paint brush near the scene. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has created a composite sketch of the suspect based on statements from witnesses.  Anyone with any information is asked to contact the FBI at 404-679-9000 or Alpharetta police at 678-297-6375.

A 23-year-old father of two sons wept and begged for leniency after pleading guilty to killing his friend with a gun shot into the dark, the Rome News Tribune reported. It didn’t work.

Shayne Bryan Crider choked back sobs Tuesday in Floyd County Superior Court as he apologized for fatally shooting his friend, Jason Darren Puryear, in December 2011, the newspaper reported. Crider pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. He shot his friend through the wall of a shed where they had been working on a car. After Puryear left, Crider heard a noise outside and shot toward it.

Judge J. Bryant Durham Jr. sentenced Crider Tuesday to 10 years in prison, followed by five years’ probation, the News-Tribune reported. The victim’s family wanted prison time.

“I hope the court will give us a little justice,” said Rita Puryear, the victim’s stepmother. “They’ll get to see their son again. We won’t.”