Broadcast prompts threats and calls for judge’s ouster
4:53 pm, March 31st, 2011
A story on public radio’s “This American Life” about the uncompromising manner in which Glynn County Superior Court Chief Judge Amanda F. Williams runs her drug court has prompted calls for her impeachment and even spawned death threats against the judge.
Reporter Ira Glass said Williams was “a judge that many people truly fear.” The report focused on three offenders in Williams’ court, saying she ordered that defendants be jailed—and held in isolation—indefinitely. Glass said the stories illustrate that Williams’ practices “violate the basic philosophy of all drug courts.”
Williams earned her law degree from John Marshall Law School in Atlanta in 1977 and practiced law in Glynn County for a decade before becoming in 1990 the first woman elected to the Brunswick Judicial Circuit Superior Court.
In the wake of Glass’s broadcast last weekend, a website, impeachjudgewilliams.com, has sprung up online. So have two Facebook pages: “Oppose/Impeach/Recall Drug Court Judge Amanda Williams,” created by the Texas coordinator of Dennis Kucinich’s 2008 presidential campaign, and “Impeach Amanda Williams,” created by a Vienna, Va., resident.
An earlier ATLaw blog post about the broadcast drew more than 100 comments criticizing the judge.
Williams told the Daily Report Thursday that judicial ethics canons prevented her from commenting on the report. But she said that death threats had been sent to her old campaign website and are being investigated by the GBI. Local authorities also have beefed up her security, she said.
Judicial Qualifications Commission Director Jeffrey R. Davis said he could not comment on whether complaints have been filed against Williams because the process is confidential until the JQC takes action against a sitting judge.
Listen to the “This American Life” story »
Contributor: R. Robin McDonald in Judges, Legal Community | subscribe to rss | 
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April 1st, 2011 at 1:28 am
Please help us! We have been suffering since this woman took office in 1990! Now that her power-mad corruption has finally reached national attention we have a chance to finally get rid of her. Don’t believe there’s real corruption in Brunswick? Our local paper has still yet to print one word about this. Listen to the podcast. Google her name. This doesn’t even address her conduct in civil and criminal court! The story http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/430/very-tough-love Our site. http://impeachjudgewilliams.com/what-you-can-do/ (UPDATE 3/31/11)Brunswick News finally printed something on this today,but as usual small town corruption had to put its spin on things. She received death threats, likely from her own camp to discredit those trying to oust her. The article comes out six days after the national radio broadcast, six days not a word, then this, corruption in Brunswick? You decide. The “news” article: http://www.impeachjudgewilliams.com/bwknews-3-31-2011.pdf
April 3rd, 2011 at 8:11 am
It would be interesting to follow the money trail from drug court just like the recent case in PA. I wonder if someone is looking into it? It would need to be investigators from outside the area thoughSomebody is getting paid. Why else would there be so many “drug treatment victims.”
April 4th, 2011 at 1:48 pm
I don’t know about corruption, Stephen, but you certainly prove there is no absence of mindless chatter. I challenge you to provide one fact that can be independently corroborated that supports your claim that the death threats came from Judge Williams’ “own camp,” or that there is even a hint of corruption relating to Judge Williams’ actions as a judge. You may not agree with her decisions, and that’s your right in this country – your irreponsible Tea Party type rant is protected under the First Amendment. So, you can happily join the ranks of the wack jobs at Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas who attend military funerals hoisting signs like “Thank God for 9/11″ and “You’re Going to Hell” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.”
August 22nd, 2012 at 1:19 am
What National Standards actually needs is a National Standard way of obtaining the numbers. In business talk it’s called Quality Assurance.