An Illinois resident has pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Atlanta to making threats  at multiple metro Atlanta schools, including Northview High School in John’s Creek, Stephenson Middle School in Stone Mountain, Meadowcreek High School in Norcross and Marietta High School, according to federal prosecutors.

Valtrez Stewart, 29, of Oak Lawn, Ill., pleaded guilty to four counts of mailing threatening communications that contained collages of newspaper and magazines clippings.  The indictment also accused Stewart of issuing threats against two other schools — Marietta Middle School and Stone Mountain Middle School.

The messages, according to federal prosecutors, claimed that a bomb would detonate at the targeted school, killing at last 20 people.  The messages also promised what prosecutors described as “brutal murders” if money was not paid to certain individuals by a certain date.

According to federal prosecutors, Stewart made the threats as a way of prompting law enforcement agencies to begin investigating people he disliked for allegedly making the deadly threats that Stewart himself had made.

Stewart is scheduled to be sentenced March 28 and faces as much as 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

For those interested in viewing Jay Ewart’s remarks at Emory University in their entirety, the school has helpfully posted video of last week’s event.

Ewart, a 2003 graduate of Emory’s law school and an associate at Arnold & Porter in Washington, was pro bono counsel for Troy Davis, executed in September for the 1989 shooting of Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail. Backed by Ewart, other lawyers and a worldwide network of activists, Davis had long maintained his innocence.

Emory law professor Kay L. Levine’s Q&A with Ewart can be found on the video following a pitch for Emory’s fundraising campaign by an Emory law student. Our reporting on the highlights of the event can be found here.

State Supreme Court Chief Justice Carol W. Hunstein delivered the high court’s annual State of the Judiciary address this morning before both chambers of the Legislature.

Her speech called for legislative support of proposed criminal justice reform efforts and the need for increased judicial funding. (Read the address here.)

Several Republican lawyer legislators later backed her message.

“I appreciated and wholeheartedly agree with the chief’s point that the judicial branch as a whole (which accounts for less than one percent of the entire state budget) has been able to deliver on its commitments to the people, even in the wake of funding cuts related to the economic recession. I’m hopeful that we will be able to slowly but surely restore those cuts over time where prudent to do so,” said Rep. Rich Golick, R-Smyrna. Golick is chairman of the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee.

Sen. Bill Hamrick, R-Carrollton, who say with Hunstein on the Special Council for Criminal Justice Reform said, the state needs “to get the nonviolent offenders out from behind bars and focus on true rehabilitation rather than just carrying out the sentence. By revising our probation and supervision process into one that removes low-risk offenders who have met all obligations, we will be able to shift our resources towards high risk offenders. The ultimate goal is to transform these people into active, contributing members of society.”

Hamrick also indicated he supports efforts to spare the judiciary’s budget.

“With such a small percentage of our state budget allocated to the judicial process, we cannot sustain the growth our criminal justice system is currently facing,” he said. “It is imperative that our state makes choices that acknowledge positive progression with low-risk prisoners, without compromising public safety, in order to control costs.”

Read tomorrow’s Daily Report for more details of the State of the Judiciary and legislative response. Or online tonight.

Atlanta’s contracting chief on Tuesday agreed with an aggrieved airport vendor that a competitor who had been awarded a currency exchange contract at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport had not adequately proved its qualifications.

The decision by Atlanta Chief Procurement Officer Adam Smith to halt the award marks a victory for Travelex Currency Services, Inc., which had successfully sought an order from the Fulton County Superior Court freezing the contract’s finalization until the city provided documents Travelex had demanded – unsuccessfully – to file a protest of the award.

A release from City Hall said that Travelex had claimed “deficiencies in the qualifications and experience of the winning proponent and supplied substantial credible evidence in support of its allegations, which evidence was previously unknown to the City. The City then conducted an independent investigation of Travelex’s allegations, confirmed the allegations, and promptly sustained Travelex’s protest, thereby halting the award of the contract to the previously selected proponent.”

Smith, quoted in the release, said the decision “demonstrates that the City is open to hearing and acting on information relevant to contracting decisions, and that the City’s protest procedures are fair.”

Also last week, a Fulton County judge ordered the city to comply with Open Records Act requests by four other losing bidders for the highly lucrative contracts, and gave the companies extra time to file protests of their individual denials.

Memorial services are planned for this week for Barry Phillips, who first joined the firm that became Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton in 1954 and was later its chairman. Phillips died Monday at the age of 82.

According to the firm, the family will receive friends at H.M. Patterson Spring Hill Chapel, on Wednesday, January 25th, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.  Funeral services will be held at Peachtree Road United Methodist Church on Thursday, January 26th, at 3 p.m.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP Scholarship Fund, in honor of Barry Phillips at the University of Georgia Law School, 120 Herty Dr, Athens, Ga. 30602, in care of the Development Office. Donations may also be made to the American Heart Association P.O. Box 840692 Dallas, Texas 75284-0692 or www.heart.org.

Online condolences may be made at H.M. Patterson & Son-Spring Hill Chapel.

A full obituary released by the firm is below: Read more »

Gov. Nathan Deal said he is not shifting oversight of the state’s accountability court programs from the judicial to the executive branch despite shifting funding for new accountability courts from the judicial to executive branch.

In his recommended Fiscal Year 2013 budget, Deal included $10 million for the creation of new drug, DUI and mental health courts. He placed that appropriation within the budget of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council rather than within the budget of the Judicial Council, which supervises existing accountability courts.

During a presentation to the local chapter of the Federalist Society on Tuesday afternoon, the governor explained his rationale was to give legislators some “degree of participation” in establishing the new accountability courts.

“I thought it would be difficult to convince the General Assembly to appropriate that amount of money and loose all say-so in how and where it should be spent,” Deal said.

Read more »

A crowd of about 50 people braved the rain Friday afternoon, January 20, to voice their anger and concern over corporations having the same rights as individuals. They marched from Woodruff Park to the Richard B. Russell Federal Building for a “rally to end corporate personhood” as part of Occupy the Courts, a nationwide event.

“There is a huge amount of corporate money buying elections, and it’s a threat to our democracy,” said Linda Thomas, a retired schoolteacher from Marietta who joined the march to the federal courthouse. “A lot of people think that if they work hard they are going to be OK—and that’s just not the case,”

People in 131 cities protested in front of their local courthouses on the eve of the second anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

Thomas supports Move to Amend, which wants to amend the Constitution to revoke corporate personhood. The group’s local chapter co-sponsored the action with Occupy Atlanta. “Under the best of circumstances, it’s hard for a working-class person to run for election. With Citizens United and the huge amounts of money being poured in by the corporations, it’s impossible,” she said.

“I think politicians running for office should be like NASCAR drivers and wear their corporate sponsorships on their backs,” said Ben Speight, a member of the Teamsters Union who spoke at the rally.

“And their spare tire on their back,” piped up a voice from the crowd to laughter and cheers.

One elderly woman made a cake with icing saying “End Corporate Personhood” that she offered to her fellow protestors, a mix of young and old.

Read more »

For the 13th year in a row, Fortune magazine has listed Atlanta-based Alston & Bird among the 100 best companies to work for.

The firm came in 24th place, tops among law firms.  Among special categories, the firm was 3rd in salary for the “most common job title”–$201,233 for associates. It was 21st in the pay  common hourly employees–$71,211 for legal secretaries. It also got a nod for an unusual perk–”learn espanol.”

“When the success of a business is predicated on the service its employees provide, it is paramount to create a workplace that rewards employee dedication – personally, professionally and financially,” said firm managing partner, Richard R. Hays, in a statement.

Update: here is a story on all four law firms that made the list, from our affiliate, the Blog of Legal Times.

Four months after watching his client Troy Anthony Davis executed at a Georgia prison, Jay Ewart entertained questions at his alma mater, Emory University. Speaking to a few dozen students, alumni and others Wednesday night, Ewart told the story of the pro bono case he picked up at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C., not long after graduating from Emory’s law school in 2003.

Davis was executed in September for the 1989 shooting of Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail. Backed by Ewart, other lawyers and a worldwide network of activists, Davis had long maintained his innocence.

Ewart said Wednesday his practice focuses on antitrust law, but he logged 600 to 700 hours on the Davis case. He won a groundbreaking victory for Davis from the U.S. Supreme Court in 2009, when it ordered Davis be given an evidentiary hearing on his innocenceclaims. But the hearing, before U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr. in Savannah, went poorly for Davis, ending his best hope for relief.

Ewart’s talk was both candid and guarded, as he offered personal insights into the case but showed some hesitancy in identifying by name the players he was discussing.

Read more »

Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle on Thursday advocated for stronger support for establishing charter schools, eliminating the sales tax on energy and building reservoirs.

Speaking to the Atlanta Press Club, the Republican lawmaker from Hall County fielded a question from the Daily Report regarding criminal justice reform—a topic heralded by top state officials last year. In addition to the governor, speaker of the House and chief justice of the state Supreme Court, Cagle made three appointments to the Special Council on Criminal Justice Reform, which released a report in November recommending giving judges sentencing alternatives, creating a statewide accountability court system and increasing the felony threshold for some nonviolent crimes.

Cagle said he believed “many but not all” of the special council’s recommendations will be well received by the Legislature. Particularly, he pointed to drug courts, which he called a “phenomenal success” in Georgia.

“We can reduce recidivism by making them [drug offenders] become productive citizens and not necessarily putting them behind bars,” he said. Keeping those offenders out of prisons and jails also will save the state and local governments money.

Cagle said he supports some of the suggested reforms with this caveat: “I’m not for weakening Georgia’s laws or being soft on anybody who has harmed one of Georgia citizens.