A federal judge in Albany has affirmed the constitutional principle that Georgia courts should be open to the public in a suit
challenging courtroom closures in the Cordele Judicial Circuit.

In a 27-page order, U.S. District Judge Louis Sands refused to dismiss a civil rights case against the circuit’s three judges – John Pridgen, Bobby Chasteen, and T. Christopher Hughes – brought by the Southern Center for Human Rights on behalf of a number of people who said they were barred from attending court hearings in the Ben Hill and Crisp County Law Enforcement Center courtrooms.

The suit claimed that the judges and county sheriffs, who were also named as defendants, systemically barred the public from attending court unless they were related to the defendants who appeared and those defendants were entering guilty pleas.

The judge rejected as “unpersuasive” the arguments put forth by the state attorney general, who is defending the judges. State lawyers argued that the judges were not closing the courts when they restricted access for reasons of space or security. Sands also rejected an argument that the public had no constitutional right to attend arraignments.

“Prohibiting the majority of the public from these proceedings often bars them from observing the entire justice system,” Sands wrote. “To deprive the public [of] the right to attend proceedings during which that process occurs could undermine the public’s faith in the modern criminal justice system.”

Southern Center Senior Counsel Gerald Weber called Sands’ ruling “a “public welcome’ sign for Georgia courtrooms that have presented citizens with untold hoops and hurdles to public access.”

Lauren Kane, a spokeswoman for Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens, said the office declined to comment because the matter was still ongoing.

The Daily Report will have a full story on its website late this afternoon.

The Judicial Council of Georgia on Friday voted to ask the Legislature in 2013 to create two new superior court judgeships.

The council says the judges are needed in the Chattahoochee and Oconee circuits but was split as to which circuit should be prioritized as first.

State Supreme Court Chief Justice Carol W. Hunstein broke the tie, placing Chattahoochee first on the council’s request list.

The requests are based on court work load and circuit population analyses by the Adminsitrative Office of the Court.

Last year, the council requested new judgeships in Bell-Forsyth, Piedmont, Middle and Oconee circuits. The Legislature approved funding two new judges–one in the Bell-Forsyth Circuit and the other in the Piedmont Circuit.

Since then, the Middle Circuit dropped its request for a new judge.

The AOC’s analyses also indentified the need of an additional judge in the Coweta Circuit, but judges there said they did not think another judge was necessary, said Judge David Emerson, president of the Council of Superior Court Judges.

While the Judicial Council did not discuss a cost estimate of creating the new judge positions, there may be difficulty in convincing the Legislature to allot the money. The Governor’s Office has notified all departments of a tight fiscal year and has asked them to find ways to cut their budgets by 3 percent.

Hunstein later advised the Judicial Council that the judiciary should speak with one voice when it asks the General Assembly for funding during the coming session and make clear how further cuts could weaken the courts’ efficiency and operations.

“The judiciary has taken a substantial reduction in previous budget cycles. It is hard for me to understand how the judicial system can continue to operate and take across-the-board cuts,” she said. “The judiciary was lean before. [A 3 percent decreased] would be substantially to the detriment of citizens across the state.”

The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reports that Muscogee County Superior Court Judge Bobby Peters declared a mistrial following three full days of jury deliberations in the trial of Kareem Lane, accused of murdering former school superintendent Jim Burns.

The state’s case fell apart when DNA evidence presented failed to positively link the defendant to the crime, the newspaper reports. When the judge declared the mistrial, 10 jurors wanted to acquit. Only two were in favor of conviction.

Laura Eschleman and Brian Mohs of Nall & Miller won $80,000 in attorney fees yesterday from the city of Fort Oglethorpe after a two-day trial in Catoosa County Superior Court over a cricket pitch, CatWalkChatt.com reports today.

A cricket pitch is the central part of a field where the English bat-and-ball game is played.

Nall & Miller’s client, plaintiff Sharon Anderson, sued the city of Fort Oglethorpe for constructing a 10-foot by 30-foot slab of concrete on the historic Polo Field, which enjoys legal protection and preservation under the city charter. The plaintiff asked only for attorney fees – and for the removal of the pitch. CatWalkChatt reported that the jury reached a verdict in the plaintiff’s favor after two hours of deliberation.

Witnesses in the trial said the pitch was constructed in 2007 at the request of a resident who liked cricket, although they believed cricket had only been played on the Polo Field once, in 2008. No mention was made of anyone playing polo there lately.

The Polo Field is the center of what is called officer’s row, a line of historic homes on Barnhardt Circle, part of the U.S. Army post that opened in 1904 and hosted the 6^th Cavalry. In World War I the post was home to 4,000 German prisoners of war. In World War II, the post served as the Army’s induction center and a training facility for women solders. It closed following World War II. The old post is the center of what is now the sprawling Chattanooga suburb of Fort Oglethorpe.

The state Judicial Qualifications Commission has reprimanded an Albany municipal court judge in connection with an alleged altercation with his wife. The JQC reprimanded Willie Weaver Sr., who presides over the municipal courts of the cities of Albany, Dawson and Sylvester, after Weaver was arrested in May 2011, according to the JQC report to the Supreme Court of Georgia.

The JQC opened an ethics investigation following media reports of Weaver’s arrest on a charge of aggravated assault. Albany news reports stated that Weaver was charged with hitting his wife in the face with a beer bottle. According to news reports, Dougherty County District Attorney Greg Edwards said the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had been called in after Weaver’s wife was taken to a local hospital with facial cuts that required stitches following what the DA described at the time as an alleged incident of domestic violence.

According to the JQC report, a special prosecutor subsequently was appointed to investigate the charge, and Weaver agreed at the time to a suspension without pay pending resolution of the case.

But Weaver’s wife, Vester Weaver, last month convened a news conference with her church pastor to deny that her husband had ever struck her, although she acknowledged at the time that a protective order was in place that barred him from contacting her. Weaver told local news media at the time that she did not ask for the protective order and wanted it lifted.

According to a report in the Albany Journal, the Weavers’ pastor—James Bush of the Greater Pines Chapel Missionary Baptist Church—said that Vesta Weaver “has been forced to learn that you can be separated from your family members with no
understanding of how and why it occurred.”

Loretta Boges, pastor of the The HOPE Center who also attended the news conference with the judge’s wife, said of the judge, “We are proud of him. … Willie has demonstrated that he is an honorable, giving man” who, in addition to serving as a municipal judge, also had served as chairman of the Dougherty County School Board. Boges demanded that the protective order against the judge
be lifted because he had been arrested “wrongfully and without any just basis” and that the “process has been unjust, unfair, and destructive of a strong black family.”

According to the JQC report, Weaver eventually entered a plea deal that dismissed the assault charge. In return, the report said that Weaver agreed to attend marital and stress counseling.

In its report, the JQC said that it had “attempted to balance its responsibility to the public to insure an honorable and independent judiciary with its responsibility to deal fairly with a judge who understands that while the criminal charge was dismissed, the event, and the publicity which followed it, brought discredit upon the judge and the judicial system.”

Both Weaver and his Albany attorney, Mark Brimberry, consented to and signed the JQC report.  Brimberry
could be reached for comment Thursday afternoon or Friday morning. Messages left at Weaver’s law office and court chambers also were not returned.

The candidacies of attorneys hoping to unseat judges in the Augusta and Northern judicial circuits have been challenged, with protests asserting that each owes tens of thousands of dollars in back taxes and is thus ineligible for office.

Letters filed with the Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s office target Willie Saunders, who is challenging Augusta Superior Court Judge Carlisle Overstreet, and Christopher NeSmith, running against Northern Circuit Superior Court Judge Thomas Hodges.

Today’s Daily Report reported that attorney Clarence Johnson, a challenger to Fulton Superior Court Judge Todd Markle, is the subject of a similar challenge.

According to the Georgia Constitution, no one who is the “holder of funds illegally shall be eligible to hold any office or appointment of honor in this state.”

Affidavits of candidacy on the Secretary of State’s website include a portion attesting that an applicant is not in default “on any federal, state, county, municipal, or school system taxes.” But they also say that “such ineligibility may be removed at any time by full payment thereof, or by making payments to the tax authority pursuant to a payment plan, or under such other conditions as the General Assembly may provide by general law.”

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The Savannah Morning News reported that Savannah attorney Lawrence Madison was convicted of child molestation and sexual battery. Chatham County Superior Court Judge James Bass Jr. sent Madison, 53, to jail immediately to await sentencing June 28.

The jury deliberated 75 minutes before convicting Madison. The newspaper said the victim, now 21, testified that the crimes began when she was 11 and continued until she was 18.

The Augusta Chronicle reported that trial lawyer Joseph Neal Jr. has been sentenced to 100 hours of community service at a waste water treatment plant and three  years of probation in a plea bargain that reduced a felony rape charge to misdemeanors.

The plea deal followed a morning of testimony from an 18-year-old baby sitter who claimed she was sexually assaulted Dec. 16 by Neal, 43, and his now ex-wife, the Chronicle reported. The newspaper said Augusta Superior Court Judge James Blanchard called the sewage treatment plant sentence “in keeping with the conduct in this case.” The misdemeanors include furnishing alcohol to someone under 21, possession of marijuana and disorderly conduct. The disorderly conduct charge was based on text messages he sent to the victim in which he allegedly described himself as a “sex god,” and said, “You can be our babysitter and sex slave LOL.”

The website of Neal Law Office describes Neal, an Augusta native and son of a trial lawyer, as a former assistant district attorney for the Augusta Judicial Circuit from 1993 to 1996 who prosecuted 1,000 felony cases and tried 100 of them before juries. In 1996, Neal took his experience into private practice, first with his father and then, starting in 2000, with his own firm, specializing in personal injury and wrongful death.

Neal’s bar listing shows he was admitted in 1993 after graduating from Mercer University Law School.

Governor Nathan Deal today appointed the head of the Prosecuting Attorney’s Council and a sole practitioner in Dahlonega to fill the two vacant Superior Court judgeships in the Enotah Judicial Circuit.

Stan Gunter has been the executive director of the PAC since 2011 and previously was district attorney for 12
years in the Enotah circuit.  Raymond George runs his own firm and has been an assist district attorney in the Northeastern Judicial Circuit.

The governor’s Judicial Nominating Commission interviewed 15 applicants for the two vacancies and released a short
list of five candidates earlier this month. The other finalists were sole practitioner Stanley Lawson, chief magistrate judge Joy Parks and Hiawassee City Manager Richard Stancil.

The two vacancies arose in March after two judges, David Barrett and Lynn Akeley-Alderman, resigned in the wake of investigations into alleged misconduct by the Judicial Qualifications Commission.

The Enotah circuit includes Union, Towns, White and Lumpkin counties.

The governor’s office said swearing-in is set for June 7.

A case of apparent road rage near Savannah last year has led to a suit against the driver of an Audi convertible accused of firing a handgun at an SUV carrying a Kennesaw family on their way home from a vacation last year.

The suit was brought by Harris Penn Lowry Delcampo, which has offices in Atlanta and Savannah, on behalf of Frank and Heather Powers. According to the complaint, filed Feb. 28 in Chatham County State Court, the couple and their three minor children were returning home in their Ford Expedition from a trip to Hilton Head Island last summer.

“As Frank Powers drove southbound along Interstate 95, a black four-door Audi driven by defendant Thurman Lee Howard merged with the southbound traffic. At or about the same time, defendant Howard became enraged at plaintiffs. While driving at an interstate speed in excess of 60 miles per hour, defendant Howard drove alongside the Powers’ Expedition, pulled out a .32 caliber handgun and or other firearm of similar nature, and opened fire at least five times on the Powers.”

Four shots lodged in the driver’s side door, the complaint said, and one shot smashed the driver’s side window, flew through the vehicle and went out the passenger’s side window. It also said the entire family suffered emotional distress and that the father was injured by flying glass.

The suit, which seeks punitive damages, accuses Howard of negligence, assault and battery.

Howard was charged in August 2011 with aggravated assault, three other felonies and two misdemeanors related to the incident, according to news reports.

Howard referred a call from the Daily Report to his attorney for both the criminal and civil cases, Thomas Withers of Savannah. Withers could not be reached.

News reports at the time of the incident identified Howard as the founder and co-owner of a Savannah-based trucking company and resident of an upscale coastal subdivision. News reports said the father told police that a few minutes before the shooting, the Audi whipped around several vehicles – including the plaintiff family’s SUV — waiting to merge onto the interstate from U.S. Highway 278.

The case is Powers v. Howard, No, STCV120033.