The bill overhauling the state’s open government laws ran into a final snag on Tuesday—but it had nothing to do with the competing interests of the news media and local governments who fought over the measure.

Gov. Nathan Deal was set to sign the bill today at an Atlanta Press Club luncheon, flanked by the two men who spearheaded the legislation, state Attorney General Sam Olens and Rep. Jay Powell, R-Camilla. But no one remembered to bring a copy of the bill.

Deal, Olens and Powell pretended to sign the bill for the cameras (and he performed the deed later in the day, according to a release from his office.)

The hiccup didn’t stop the governor from praising bipartisan effort and stakeholder cooperation, including input from a number of First Amendment lawyers, that led to the General Assembly’s passage of House Bill 397 last month.

Deal himself had a hand in the legislation. He pushed for a new exemption that would restrict public access to records pertaining to large scale state economic development projects that involved the expenditure of $25 million or more until the state had a commitment in place. Deal said the exemption would prevent Georgia from being “victimized by competitors or other states” who might use Georgia’s Open Records Act to gain information about budding projects in advance and trump Georgia’s bids.

During his speech, Deal focused on the three main pillars of his legislative agenda last session: education, tax reform and criminal justice reform.

He said his office has worked hard to make Georgia “the number one place in the nation to do business.” But to fully realize that ideal, the state will have to address many of its ills, which Deal said stem from lack of employment.

Deal also answered a question from the Daily Report about the record number of judicial appointments he has made in his term compared to other recent governors. (Currently, there are two vacancies in the Enotah Judicial Circuit that arose after judges resigned in the wake of investigations by the Judicial Qualifications Commission for alleged misconduct.)

“I’ve been surprised by it,” Deal said. “I don’t know the reason for it. I think part of it is the increasing scrutiny about what is happening on the bench in our state, and it’s unfortunate when that is the reason behind the vacancies. And I think some of it there have been individuals who have served for a long time and are tired and ready to retire.”

Emory Law School is hosting a symposium on Friday challenging the notion that the most convincing evidence comes from eyewitnesses. Speakers include law officers, policy advocates and criminologists, who will explain factors leading to misidentification by eyewitnesses and outline ways to improve identification accuracy. They will also discuss the impact of shrinking state budgets on policy reforms to improve evidence collection.

Speakers include Steve Saloom from the Innocence Project, Clayton County sheriff Kem Kimbrough, LaGrange police chief Louis Dekmar, Liz Markowitz, who is a Fulton County Public Defender and Jennifer Dysart, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

One of the organizers, Reade Seligmann, was one of the three defendants falsely accused in the 2006 Duke Lacrosse case. He is now a second-year law student at Emory.

The conference is free and open to the public. It will take place from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Emory Law’s Tull Auditorium at 1301 Clifton Rd. Attendees are eligible for three free CLE credits. To register, click here.

At a seminar last week on how to become a federal judge, U.S. District Judges Richard W. Story and Thomas W. Thrash Jr.  gently ribbed each other about a time when Thrash – who was then in private practice – appeared before Story, who was then a Hall County Superior Court judge in Gainesville.

“I practiced in front of some fabulous judges, including Judge Rick Story,” Thrash said of his fellow Clinton appointee during the discussion.

“Who he got reversed,” Story interjected.

Replied Thrash: “I told you I would get you reversed.”

At another point during the event, hosted by and the American Constitution Society and McKenna Long & Aldridge, Story offered a look at his background.

“You don’t have to graduate from Harvard Law School” to be a federal judge, he said proudly. “You can be a little boy from Harlem, Georgia. Whose daddy ran a filling station.”

Story earned his undergraduate degree at LaGrange College and his law degree at the University of Georgia.  He was appointed to the federal bench by Clinton in 1998.

AG Sam Olens (L) and Bill Bolling of the Atlanta Community Food Bank announce Georgia Legal Food Frenzy 2012. Click photo for Facebook slide show of the press conference.

Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens is hoping to stir up competition between law firms.

Olens announced Wednesday at the Capitol the start of a new statewide food drive to benefit the seven regional food banks of the Georgia Food Bank Association. The Georgia Legal Food Frenzy will begin April 23 and will pit firms, large and small, private and public, against each other to see which can collect the most donations.

Three other states participate in similar food drives.

“Half a million children in this state live in poverty,” Olens said. “One in six Georgians lack adequate access to food. The face of hunger in this state is getting worse and worse as this recession lingers.”

The two-week drive will end May 4 to coincide with Law Day. The winning firm will be awarded the Attorney General’s Cup, and smaller awards will recognize firms with large per capita donations.

Olens said the goal should be to collect more than 600,000 pounds of food, which Virginia collected its first year participating in the Food Frenzy. Five years later, Virginia collects more than one million pounds.

Law firms that want to enter the Food Frenzy can sign up beginning today at www.galegalfoodfrenzy.org.

The Emory Public Interest Committee is hosting its annual EPIC Inspiration Awards ceremony at 7 p.m. on Feb. 7. EPIC raised more than $150,000 last year for summer grants to Emory Law students to do public service work. The event is the group’s primary fundraiser and requires a $35 donation.

This year’s honorees are Norman L. Underwood of Troutman Sanders for his lifetime commitment to public service; Jan Pratt, who retired last year from her post as director of Emory Law School’s field placement and pro bono programs; and Susan C. Jamieson, who founded the Atlanta Legal Aid Society’s Mental Health and Disability Rights project 25 years ago. Jamieson won a landmark 1999 Supreme Court ruling for disability rights, Olmstead v. L.C., representing two women in a Georgia mental institution who wanted to live in the community.

To attend, contact Sue McAvoy at smcavoy@law.emory.edu.

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.

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 »

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 »

The polls and the pundits and the experts don’t matter right now. It’s all up to the voters.

That’s the view from the ground in Iowa on caucus day 2012, according to Patrick Millsaps, a partner with Georgia firm Hall Booth Smith & Slover, and former chairman of the Georgia Ethics Commission.

Millsaps was tapped for deputy counsel to the Newt Gingrich presidential campaign just last week. With his colleagues’ blessings he rushed out the door and headed northwest, where he’s busy poring over Iowa balloting law on the day of the caucuses – the traditional, kickoff day in the run-up to national political party nominations.

Millsaps was clearly excited to be under the political circus tent that is Iowa in January of a presidential election year. Through the din of raucous background noise at the Gingrich campaign’s Iowa headquarters he told the Daily Report the scene there was ”crazy” (in a good way), and that he was experiencing a “disconnect” between published polls and, anecdotally, what he’s seeing on the ground as fervent support for Gingrich.

By tomorrow, though, the Iowa votes will be counted, someone will have won, and Millsaps will be out the door quickly. It will be on to New Hampshire or another key state in the Republican primary. He’s not sure where he’ll land, saying:

I’ve never bought so many one-way tickets in my life!