Crawford County’s chief magistrate judge, who was arrested last week on a felony theft charge and suspended by the state Judicial Qualifications Commission, admitted to agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that she had taken funds from the magistrate court, according to a criminal arrest warrant.

Judge Andrea Peterman also told GBI agents that she used the money she took for personal purchases, including gas and other incidentals, and that she also gave some of the funds to her children, the affidavit stated.

Peterman also told the GBI that whenever she took funds, “she would normally try to replace the money on pay day,” the affidavit said.

Last week, the GBI charged Peterman with fiduciary theft and violating her oath of office, both felonies, after the Macon Circuit district attorney, who also oversees Crawford County, initiated an investigation. Rodney Wall, special agent in charge of the GBI’s Perry office, said that county auditors doing a routine audit of the magistrate’s office began raising questions after they were unable to account for some of the funds.

Peterman is currently free on bond and has been barred from the courthouse while the charges against her are pending. The JQC announced Monday that it was suspending her with pay pending the outcome of the charges.

Neither Peterman nor her attorney, William Phillips, could be reached for comment.

The Judicial Qualifications Commission has issued new charges against a Grady County state court judge, accusing him of improperly instructing county lawyers to drop cases against defendants.

The new charges—filed Monday against Judge J. William Bass Sr. at the Supreme Court of Georgia—also accuse the judge of trying defendants who failed to appear in court in absentia rather than issue bench warrants for their arrests.

Bass, a Cairo attorney who has served as president of the Council of State Court Judges, is slated to face a JQC tribunal next
month.

In December, the JQC charged Bass with multiple violations of the state judicial ethics canons. They included improperly allowing his social relationships, including his Facebook friends, to influence his judicial conduct. The JQC also said Bass illegally fined criminal defendants hundreds of thousands of dollars to boost county revenues and increase his own salary; verbally attacked people in his courtroom; and retaliated against county contractors whom he had accused of supporting his
political opponent in the 2010 election.

The December charges also claimed Bass improperly appointed his son, with whom he shares a law practice in Cairo, to preside over state court judicial proceedings whenever the judge was not available.

Bass has previously declined to comment on the charges. He could not be reached for comment Monday. Bass’s attorney, Christopher Townley, was unavailable for comment Monday. In December, Townley told the Daily Report that some of the JQC’s allegations were false and others were “out of context” and “making a mountain out of a molehill.” Townley also told the JQC that Bass would not resign and intended to fight the charges.

The new charges claim that in October 2009, Bass conducted a bench trial of defendant Rene Billiot in absentia after Billiot failed to appear for court. Bass, according to the JQC, “had not determined adequately the reasons for the failure of the defendant to appear for the trial.” The new charges cite the Billiot case as “an example” of conduct that
was not limited to a single defendant.

The Judicial Qualifications Commission investigator whose probes have ended dozens of judicial careers since 2008 will no longer roam the state in search of wayward jurists.

Instead, Richard Hyde will be a member of the JQC itself, the agency that assesses how allegations and evidence against Georgia’s judges should be handled. Governor Nathan Deal tapped Hyde to the JQC on Friday.

Chattahoochee Superior Court Judge John Allen, who chairs the commission, said Hyde would have to relinquish his investigative duties in order to serve as a member.  “It’s a policy on our part as commissioners that we don’t investigate,” said Allen. The JQC will launch a search for another investigator, Allen said. In the meantime, JQC Director Jeff Davis, who used to handle disciplinary complaints at the State Bar of Georgia, will serve as acting investigator.

Hyde will replace Atlanta businessman Jack Winter, who has served two four-year terms as one of two citizen members of the seven-member panel, which also includes two judges and three lawyers.

In addition to his JQC duties, Hyde is an investigator for Balch & Bingham. A former policeman, television news producer and investigator for then-Attorney General Michael Bowers, now a B&B partner, Hyde is a good choice for the slot, Allen said.

“It will allow us a great deal of comfortable continuity, if you will,” said Allen. “He knows what the processes and procedures are.”

In an emailed statement, Davis echoed Allen’s praises.

“Given Richard’s breadth of experience as a public corruption investigator with the State Attorney General, his recent investigation of teachers in the Atlanta schools cheating scandal, and his tireless work investigating judicial misconduct, it is clear that the Governor could not have made a better choice than Richard Hyde to represent the interests of the citizens of this State on the Commission,” wrote Davis. “It is an outstanding appointment which will ensure continued public confidence in a fair and impartial judiciary.”

Hyde declined to comment on his appointment.

Former Murray County Deputy Joshua Greeson told reporters at an impromptu news conference Wednesday afternoon that has been posted on YouTube that he arrested a witness in a state judicial ethics investigation on what turned out to be false charges because he was “following orders that I was given to do,” by his captain,  Michael Henderson.

Greeson held the news conference in Rome after pleading not guilty to a federal indictment unsealed Wednesday that accuses him of making false statements to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and deleting information from his cell phone in an attempt to obstruct a civil rights investigation.

Greeson said that he arrested Angela Garmley, who had been cooperating with the state Judicial Qualifications Commission in its investigation of Murray County Magistrate Judge Bryant Cochran, based on a lookout for her car that Henderson – who was Greeson’s supervisor and is Cochran’s cousin – had given him several weeks before her arrest.

The JQC had been investigating Cochran for several months before he resigned to end the probe a day after Garmley was arrested.  The GBI determined that the methamphetamine that Greeson found hidden beneath Garmley’s car during a traffic stop had been planted, but Greeson has not been charged with planting the drugs. Neither federal prosecutors nor the GBI have said who they think may have done so.

On Wednesday, Henderson’s attorney, Lawrence Stagg, could not be reached for comment.

In the video, Greeson is accompanied by his attorney, Ed Marger, Greeson said that Henderson had given him the lookout, telling him that the  car was suspected of “hauling drugs.”  He said it was “three weeks or so later” before he spotted it and stopped it for failing to dim the headlights for an oncoming car.  The car belonged to Garmley, who was a passenger in the car. But within days, the GBI had recommended that the charges be dismissed because the drugs had been planted.

Greeson said that a day before he was to be interviewed by the GBI, Henderson stopped by his house and warned him “not to mention the lookout on the vehicle he gave me,” Greeson told reporters. Henderson also told him “if I didn’t say nothing about the vehicle that nobody else would know about it,” he said.

Greeson said that he was “scared about what he [Henderson] would do if I didn’t, and repeated what his supervisor had told him to the GBI. But he said he soon changed his mind, contacted GBI agents and told them what Henderson had told him to say. “It was the only thing I told them that wasn’t right,” he said. “If he [Henderson] hadn’t stopped by my house, I wouldn’t be part of this. It was just being afraid of him.”

Greeson also apologized for arresting Garmley.”I never wanted to be a person who done somebody wrong,” he said.
Greeson said that when GBI agents asked him if he had deleted anything from his cell phone in connection with the case, he said he gave them his cell phone freely and told them, “I delete stuff all the time, message, pictures…. Like anybody does.”

He said when agents asked him if he had deleted anything pertaining to the case, he told them he had deleted photos of the drugs he had discovered under Garmley’s car that he had taken when they were in a detective’s office.

“I didn’t think it was substantial when I was deleting them,” he said. “The reason I deleted them was… I didn’t want anything to remind me of this case. It was the worst headache.”

A federal grand jury has charged a former Murray County sheriff’s deputy with lying to state law enforcement agents and attempting to obstruct their investigation of a false arrest linked to a former Murray County magistrate judge.

Federal authorities on Wednesday unsealed a Jan. 3 indictment of former Deputy Joshua Greeson that stems from Greeson’s arrest of last summer of Murray County resident Angela Garmley. Greeson arrested Garmley Aug. 14 on a felony drug charge, the night before then-Murray County Magistrate Judge Bryant Cochran resigned to end an ethics investigation by the state Judicial Qualifications Commission. Garmley had publicly accused Cochran of attempting to trade favorable legal rulings for sex and was, according to the JQC director, its “principal informant” in the probe of Cochran.

Within a week of Garmley’s arrest, the drug charge was dismissed on the recommendation of GBI agents who said they had determined that the illegal drugs Greeson found under Garmley’s car had been planted. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation then launched a probe of the circumstances leading to Garmley’s arrest.

The federal indictment accuses Greeson of lying to the the GBI about information that federal prosecutors said  he had been
given concerning a police lookout for Garmley’s vehicle. The indictment also charges the former deputy with destroying a record with the intent to obstruct the GBI investigation. Federal prosecutors said Greeson deleted information relevant to the GBI investigation from his cell phone. Read more »

A Camden County associate probate judge who was briefly famous in 1996 when she issued the marriage license for John F. Kennedy Jr. and his bride-to-be pleaded guilty today to three felonies stemming from an ethics investigation by the state Judicial Qualifications Commission, said a special prosecutor who negotiated the plea deal.

Shirley Wise, an associate probate judge who in November was elected chief probate judge of the county, pleaded guilty to theft by taking, theft by deception, and violating her oath of office, a felony under Georgia law, said Brian Rickman, the district attorney of Georgia’s Mountain Circuit who was appointed as a special prosecutor to handle the criminal case by Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens.

David Cavender, Chief Superior Court Judge of the Atlantic Judicial Circuit, sentenced Wise as a  first offender to seven years probation and ordered her to pay $5,500 in restitution to the county and a $1,000 fine, Rickman said after the plea hearing.

Wise also agreed, as a special condition of her sentence, that she would not seek or accept any public office – an agreement that was not limited to a judicial post, Rickman said.

Wise’s attorney, James Stein of St. Mary’s, said that in pleading guilty, Wise accepted responsibility for her actions and mitigated expenses for Camden County’s taxpayers “who would have been burdened with the expenses of a trial” if she had chosen to fight the charges.

“It was in the best interest of all concerned,” he said. “Serious consideration was given to mitigating expenses for everyone concerned. … The whole purpose was to put this thing to rest and stop the clock on expenses of the county and everyone concerned.”

A Sumter County  state court judge resigned from his judicial post late Thursday to end an ethics investigation by the state Judicial Qualifications Commission.

Judge Russ Barnes, 48, an Americus attorney who also served part-time as the county’s sole state court judge, resigned after the JQC opened an inquiry focusing on whether Barnes had mismanaged or misappropriated funds he held in a fiduciary capacity, according to a public report closing the case that the JQC filed today with the Supreme Court of Georgia.

The JQC also was investigating whether the judge had violated the state’s judicial ethics canons by engaging in conduct that brought his judicial office into disrepute or undermined public confidence in the judiciary, according to the report.

Barnes signed a consent order in which he agreed that he will not seek, request or accept elected or appointed judicial office (including a senior judge post) in the future.

Barnes’ resignation is effective immediately. In a handwritten resignation letter that Gov. Nathan Deal accepted late Thursday, Barnes gave no reason for his resignation, stating only, “I have enjoyed my service … but must resign my position.”

Barnes earned his law degree from Mercer University in 1990.  He could not be reached for comment.

JQC director Jeffrey Davis could not be reached for comment.

Barnes stepped down from the bench just three weeks after his wife reported him missing on Nov. 8 and he failed to report for court that morning. The judge had left home the previous night about 10 p.m., telling his wife he was going to his office, according to WALB News.  His disappearance prompted a ground and air search by the Sumter County Sheriff’s Department, Americus police, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Georgia State Patrol, according to reports in the Americus Times-Recorder.

After a day-long search, Americus police spotted Barnes driving his black Suburban in the parking lot of a local Wal-Mart store and stopped him, according to the Times-Recorder.  Eric Bryant, a colonel with the Sumter County  Sheriff’s Department, told the newspaper that law enforcement authorities “were concerned about his [Barnes’] state of mind. … It was obvious he needed to speak with someone.”

Sumter Sheriff Pete Smith told WALB News that the judge “was having some very tough financial times right now.”

The judge was taken to Phoebe Sumter Medical Center for a mental health assessment and subsequently transported to the Albany Crisis Center, Bryant told the Times-Recorder.

Barnes is the sixth Georgia judge to resign this year to end a judicial ethics investigation and Camden County Chief Magistrate Judge Shirley Wise is scheduled to face a JQC  ethics tribunal by the JQC on December 17.

The State Judicial Qualifications Commission has privately reprimanded a state court judge in Washington County who pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of alcohol and excessive speeding, according to a report filed today with the Supreme Court of Georgia.

The judicial disciplinary agency made public the fact—but not the contents—of the private reprimand of Washington County State Court Judge Robert Wommack Jr., in a report announcing the disposition of the ethics case.

In March, Wommack entered a guilty plea in Laurens County Probate Court. Wommack was sentenced at that time to 12 months probation and ordered to pay a $945 fine, according to the JQC report. His driver’s license was suspended for 120 days, and he was ordered to attend a DUI/risk reduction course, participate for 40 hours in an Alcohol Anonymous program and serve 22 hours of community service, the JQC report said.

It also said Wommack had promptly reported his arrest to the JQC and voluntarily disqualified himself from all cases involving DUIs that were then pending in state court. According to the JQC report, Wommack also discussed with the JQC the facts of his arrest and the resolution of the charges.

The judge “complied with every request of the commission,” the report stated. “In agreeing to this disposition, the Commission 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 complied with all requests of the Commission.”
It concluded, “This agreed upon disposition is fair and just for all concerned.”

Neither Wommack nor his attorney, Ralph Jackson, could be reached for comment.

The Murray County sheriff has suspended two deputies in connection with the arrest on a bogus drug charge of a Murray County woman who was cooperating with a state judicial ethics investigation, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation confirmed Tuesday.

GBI Special Agent James Harris told the Daily Report today that Murray County Sheriff Howard Ensley on Monday suspended Deputy Josh Greeson, who arrested witness Angela Garmley on a felony drug possession charge during an Aug. 14 traffic stop.

Garmley had been cooperating with the state Judicial Qualifications Commission in an ethics  probe of Murray County’s former chief magistrate judge, Bryant Cochran.

Cochran,  a former Murray County deputy who had just been elected to his third term as the county’s chief magistrate, resigned the day after Garmley was arrested.

Harris said the sheriff also suspended Greeson’s supervisor, Capt. Michael Henderson. Harris said that Henderson is Cochran’s cousin.  Both deputies have been suspended with pay, he said.

Harris said in his experience, it is “pretty common for a department head to place individuals in the middle of an investigation on leave with pay.” Harris said the GBI investigation is “ongoing.”

Last Friday, on the GBI’s recommendation,  Conasauga District Attorney Bert Poston dismissed the charge against Garmley after GBI agents determined that the drugs Greeson found had been planted under her car. The GBI has not determined who planted the drugs.

Ensley was not in the office and could not be reached for comment. He has not returned repeated calls from the Daily Report about Garmley’s arrest or the GBI investigation. The Daily Report has been unable to reach Greeson for comment.

On Tuesday, Henderson’s attorney, Lawrence Stagg, told the Daily Report that Henderson “is not guilty of any wrongdoing” and “is definitely denying any wrongdoing.”

Stagg acknowledged that Henderson had been in contact with Cochran regarding Angela Garmley before her arrest because “she had some kind of contact with the judge for months.” But Garmley’s allegation that her arrest was a set-up and a subsequent finding that illegal drugs had been planted under her car “were a surprise to my client.”

Stagg said that Henderson has been cooperating with the GBI investigation. Read more »

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.