Gov. Deal’s budget, released Wednesday, adds a much needed $106,734  to the remainder of the state Judicial Qualification Commissions’ FY 2011 budget, which began July 1, 2010. The money would increase the JQC’s 2011 budget by nearly 50 percent

The governor’s budget request is based on a recommendation the state Judicial Council of Georgia made last fall. The Georgia Assembly must still approve the supplemental appropriation requests. Read more »

The State Bar of Georgia has appointed Bar President S. Lester Tate III as one of its three appointees to the state Judicial Qualifications Commission.

Tate will replace JQC chairman Benjamin F. Easterlin IV, who rotates off the commission when his second term as one of the Bar’s three JQC representatives ends in December.

The bar’s Board of Governors appointed Tate and named Marietta attorney and former Bar president Robert D. Ingram to a second term on the JQC at a meeting last weekend. Read more »

The Judicial Council of Georgia on Friday voted to submit a proposed budget to the Legislature that asks for about $156,000 over the next two years to enhance the meager budget of the state Judicial Qualifications Commission.

The Judicial Council approved a supplemental request by the JQC for the current fiscal year.

Jeffrey Davis, the JQC’s director, said that $56,000 of the total will be used to pay past-due legal bills, most of them due to Balch & Bingham, the firm of Michael J. Bowers, who has been acting as the JQC’s chief prosecutor. The remaining $50,000 will be used by the JQC this year to finance judicial prosecutions and investigations that the agency currently has under way, Davis said. Read more »

The Georgia Public Defender Standards Council has retained the former president of the State Bar of Georgia to investigate whether an affair between former Griffin Superior Court Chief Judge Paschal English and Kim Cornwell, a Griffin Circuit public defender, compromised any of Cornwell’s cases that were adjudicated by English.

Mack Crawford, the council’s executive director, said that after consultation with Gov. Sonny Perdue’s executive counsel, Nels Peterson, and the Georgia Attorney General’s office, he asked Bryan M. Cavan to conduct an independent investigation.    Read more »

Gov. Sonny Perdue has tapped Robert M. “Mack” Crawford, director of the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council, and Fayette County State Court Judge W. Fletcher Sams for the two open judgeships on the Griffin Judicial Circuit Superior Court. Additionally, Sutherland partner Carla Wong McMillian was named to Sams’ seat on the Fayette State Court.

The appointments were announced Wednesday morning by Gov. Sonny Perdue, who will have to choose a successor to Crawford on the Standards Council.  Read more »

Albert L. Thompson

Fulton County State Court Chief Judge Albert L. Thompson resigned his judgeship Thursday, saying in a brief resignation letter to Gov. Sonny Perdue that after 30 years in service to the state, “it is time to move on.”

Thompson’s four-line letter said his resignation will be effective Sept. 6.  “It has been a distinct pleasure and a priviledge [sic],” the judge concluded. “Thank you and all the citizens of Georgia.”

Perdue’s executive counsel, Nels Peterson, said that he was in a meeting when he received Thompson’s resignation letter by a member of the governor’s staff. Peterson said he did not know what prompted Thompson’s resignation. Read more »

Gov. Sonny Perdue has named Linda Evans –  the wife of former Georgia Republican Party general counsel  J. Randolph Evans — to the state Judicial Qualifications Commission. Evans replaces Robert P. Herriott, a retired Delta Air Lines pilot who resigned from the commission last May, saying in his resignation letter to the governor that he believed the commission had surrendered some of its independence to the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia.

Evans, an attorney, joins the seven-member JQC as one of two “citizen” appointees named by the governor. The Commission also includes two judges selected by the state Supreme Court and three attorneys, each of whom must have at least 10 years of experience, and who are selected by the State Bar of Georgia. Read more »