DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Clarence Seeliger  announced this week that he will seek re-election to the post he has he for 28 years.

“I have been honored to be on the DeKalb County bench … and if the citizens of DeKalb County agree, I would like to continue my service,” Seeliger said. “I am in good health, and I enjoy the work; it’s an honor to serve with such a fine Superior Court bench and the outstanding lawyers that practice in DeKalb County.”

Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge William M. “Billy” Ray II confirmed today that he will step down from his seven-year post presiding over the county’s drug court program.

Ray was careful to explain that he is not retiring from the court to which he was appointed in 2002. Rather, he said he will hand over drug court to fellow Superior Court Judge Thomas N. Davis Jr. in June so that he can devote time to his new post as secretary/treasurer of the state’s Council of Superior Court Judges.

“It takes a lot of time, and it’s a three- to four-year commitment,” Ray said. “I’ll have to frequently be out of the office on Fridays to attend meetings of the Judicial Council and Council of Superior
Court Judges.”

Ray also said that he hopes to establish a veterans court program in Gwinnett County that may begin operating as early as the end of this year.

The veterans court would be modeled after the existing drug and DUI courts in the county but will be “a little smaller, a little more intimate,” Ray said. The court will coordinate veterans in legal trouble with services such as drug abuse treatment, counseling, job training and housing.

While there is no estimate of how much the veterans court program will cost to create or how many offenders will participate, Ray said the program will start small and should cost the county less than a drug court program because much of the treatment and services will be paid for with existing federal grants.

Davis, who was first appointed to the bench by then-Gov. Sonny Perdue in late 2005, is a former prosecutor and Navy veteran.

Gov. Nathan Deal’s Judicial Nominating Commission is accepting candidates for the recent vacancy in the Enotah Judicial Circuit.

The vacancy was created when Superior Court Chief Judge David E. Barrett resigned March 1 after three lawyers said he brandished a gun on the bench during a hearing in late February. While judges are allowed under state law to carry weapons to court, the Judicial Qualifications Commission was investigating the incident, one of the lawyers in the courtroom said.

The JNC will accept submitted nominations through March 23 and will mail application packets to those candidates by April 13. The commission is scheduled to review candidates sometime after April 23.

Nominations may be addressed to Judicial Nominating Commission, c/o Dana McGuire, 600 Peachtree N.E., Suite 5200, Atlanta, GA 30308-2216 or sent by fax to 404-962-6919 or by email to dana.mcguire@troutmansanders.com.

A commercial and business litigation lawyer will become the newest judge in the Stone Mountain Judicial Circuit.

Gov. Nathan Deal on Friday appointed Asha F. Jackson, 36, to fill the seat on the DeKalb County Superior Court that was vacated last month by Judge Michael E. Hancock.

Jackson, who is a partner at Barnes & Thornburg as well as a pro hac judge for the DeKalb County Recorder’s Court, was nominated for the seat by Fulton County Superior Court Judge D. Todd Markle. He was Deal’s executive counsel before the governor tapped him for the Fulton court. Jackson also received a letter of recommendation from Hancock, for whom she clerked after graduating from Tulane Law School in 2000.

Jackson’s appointment will become effective upon her swearing-in, but a date for the ceremony has not yet been announced.

U.S. District Senior Judge Hugh Lawson on Friday officially tossed out the guilty pleas of Brooks E. Blitch III, the former chief judge of the Alapaha Circuit, and Berrien L. Sutton, the circuit’s former state and juvenile court judge.

Brooks Blitch

In 2007, the two resigned their posts to end an ethics investigation by the state Judicial Qualifications Commission. They were subsequently indicted by a federal grand jury – Blitch on charges of conspiracy, honest services fraud, extortion, and making false statements, and Sutton on charges of conspiracy and honest services fraud. In 2009, Sutton pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit honest services fraud in return for a prison sentence of a year and a day. Three months later, Blitch entered a guilty plea to a single count of honest services fraud in return for a probated sentence.

Blitch’s sentence prompted Lawson to scold federal prosecutors, given that Blitch had been the target of a three-year federal investigation. Lawson later probated Sutton’s sentence and that of the circuit’s former Superior Court clerk, at prosecutors’ request.

In 2010, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of former Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling that honest services fraud was applicable only when defendants were proven to have participated in a bribery or kickback scheme, Blitch and Sutton sought to have their convictions and their pleas overturned.  Federal prosecutors in Macon did not contest Blitch’s motion, although they did contest Sutton’s.  Last fall, U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles Weigle recommended that both the pleas and sentences be set aside.

Lawson’s order in Blitch’s case did not specify his reasons. But in dismissing Sutton’s case, the judge wrote that the indictment and stipulated facts set forth in Sutton’s plea agreement “do not describe a bribery or kickback scheme, and in Skilling v. United States 130 S.Ct. 2896, 2931 (2010), the Supreme Court held that honest services fraud theories other than bribery and kickback schemes are invalid. Further, the Court agrees that the mail and wire fraud charges in Count 1 [of the indictment] cannot stand on their own.”

Ed.’s note: Related article, Feds let former judge’s fraud conviction slide. Also from Daily Report’s Robin McDonald.

Gainesville-based U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan S. Cole has announced that she will retire Sept. 1, and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia says it is seeking applicants for her replacement.  Applications must be submitted by the applicant and postmarked no later than March 9.

The minimum qualifications for appointment to the post require that an applicant be younger than 70,  a member in good standing of the highest court of a state for at least five years and have practiced law for at least five years (although substitute experience may include being a state or federal judicial officer, an attorney for a state or federal agency or, for two years only, a law clerk to a judge), and no relation to any judge on the U.S. District Court.

Other criteria are: candidates who are disciplined, hard-working and able to handle simultaneously a multitude of duties that involve firm time deadlines. They are also seeking candidates with “exceptional and demonstrated” writing, research and analytic skills.

A merit selection panel that includes attorneys and other members of the legal community will review all applicants and recommend five candidates to  the judges who sit on the Northern District bench for the final selection.

An FBI and IRS investigation will be conducted prior to any appointment. The post pays $160,080 a year.

For applications (copy here) and further information, contact Linda G. Cooke, Human Resources Manager, U.S. District Court, 75 Spring Street, Room 2013, Atlanta, GA  30303-3309, 404-215-1750.  All applications will remain confidential, unless the applicant consents to disclosure. The merit selection panel’s deliberations also will remain confidential. Applicants are requested not to initiate contact with individual district judges regarding the vacancy during the merit selection process.

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.

The Savannah Morning News’ website says that that Chatham County Superior Court Judge Michael Karpf became the chief judge today and told a packed courtroom that his first priority will be the renovation of the Montgomery Street courthouse and construction of a new trial court building, according to Savannahnow.com.

Karpf succeeds Chief Judge Perry Brannen Jr., who took senior status this month after 32 years on the bench.

We have pictures and video of Judge Michael Boggs of Blackshear being sworn in today to the Georgia Court of Appeals by Governor Deal. Find that on the Daily Report’s Facebook page.

Gov. Nathan Deal is expected to swear in tomorrow his first appellate court appointee, Michael P. Boggs.

The ceremony is scheduled for 11 a.m. tomorrow in the state House of Representatives chamber, according to Boggs’ office. Deal on Dec. 20 appointed Boggs, a Superior Court judge in the six-county Waycross Judicial Circuit since 2004, to replace retiring Judge J.D. Smith of the state Court of Appeals.