Journalist Paul M. Barrett, an assistant managing editor at Bloomberg Businessweek, will speak about and sign his book, Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun, at Peerless Book Store in Alpharetta tonight beginning at 7 p.m.  Barrett signs his book – which tells the story of how a gun constructed largely of hardened plastic became the firearm of choice for the majority of the nation’s law enforcement agencies – on the eve of the trial of former Glock CEO and general counsel Paul F. Jannuzzo in Cobb County Superior Court in Marietta.  During the 90s, Jannuzzo became the face of America’s gun industry.  He is facing trial on theft and
racketeering charges.

An excerpt:  “Across the United States, the preferences of local cops and county deputies have broad commercial consequences. The American civilian gun-buying population tends to gravitate toward what the professionals carry. For Glock, that translated into a bonanza.  The Glock 17 gained profit-making momentum in the fashion of a classic American consumer fad – one that, rather than fade away, kept expanding year after year. Venerable rivals, chiefly Smith & Wesson, ignored Glock at first and then scoffed at him. Eventually, they began imitating the Austrian invader, flooding the market with knockoffs. The Americans, to this day, haven’t caught up.”

Over at his Georgia Criminal Appellate Law Blog, McDonough criminal defense attorney J. Scott Key has gotten into a heated debate with Southwestern Circuit Public Defender Samuel G. Merritt over how public defender offices should handle client conflicts.

What has brought the question to a head is an advisory opinion issued in 2010 by the State Bar board that drafts opinions on ethical matters. The opinion says different lawyers employed in the same circuit public defender office may not represent co-defendants when a single lawyer representing those defendants would have a conflict of interest.

Worried about the potential costs of that approach, the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council has challenged the rule, arguing that many such conflicts can be addressed by screening off lawyers within an office. The Georgia Supreme Court heard arguments on the matter last month. (Formal Advisory Opinion No. 10-1 videos)

A post by Key criticized public defenders’ willingness to support what Key says are double standards for poor people.

That prompted a lengthy response from Merritt, who said he didn’t think Key had all the facts.

Key shot back that he was chairman of the amicus committee for the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and bristled at the idea that the opinions of someone “outside the public defender world” carried less weight.

Check out Key’s blog for all the rhetorical fireworks.

The mother of a former seventh grader at a Clayton County charter school has sued the school district, two school officials  and a county deputy chief for what the suit describes as a “degrading strip search” of her son without either probable cause or “individualized suspicion.”

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, stems from improper strip searches last year by a Clayton County school resource officer of five students who were falsely accused by other students of having marijuana on school property.

The strip search of the seventh grader subsequently resulted in the firing of Officer Ricky Redding after he told two “totally different” stories about the strip search, and the suspension of the
school’s assistant principal, who approved the search,  according to the suit.  The assistant principal, Tyrus McDowell, subsequently resigned.

The strip search of the seventh grader, a student at Eddie White Academy in Clayton County, took place after three students suspected of having marijuana on school property  were strip searched. When no contraband was found, they falsely accused two other students of having the illegal drug, according to the suit.

School personnel then strip-searched the fourth student and, finding nothing, brought the plaintiff to the vice principal’s office, where his pockets and book bag were searched, according to the suit.

Read more »

The most recent issue of Emory Magazine features on its cover the face of Jay Ewart, the Emory alum who represented Troy Davis.

Ewart, a 2003 graduate of Emory’s law school and an associate at Arnold & Porter in Washington, was pro bono counsel for 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.

In the article, Ewart say the Davis case remains on his mind.

“It’s strange, because I still think about the case constantly,” he says. “I’ll have an idea for a new strategy, and then I’ll kind of wake up and remind myself that Troy’s dead, it’s over. Luckily they haven’t been great ideas so far. I have to hope I don’t get one.”

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.

Gov. Nathan Deal said he is not shifting oversight of the state’s accountability court programs from the judicial to the executive branch despite shifting funding for new accountability courts from the judicial to executive branch.

In his recommended Fiscal Year 2013 budget, Deal included $10 million for the creation of new drug, DUI and mental health courts. He placed that appropriation within the budget of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council rather than within the budget of the Judicial Council, which supervises existing accountability courts.

During a presentation to the local chapter of the Federalist Society on Tuesday afternoon, the governor explained his rationale was to give legislators some “degree of participation” in establishing the new accountability courts.

“I thought it would be difficult to convince the General Assembly to appropriate that amount of money and loose all say-so in how and where it should be spent,” Deal said.

Read more »

Good morning! We have plenty of new multimedia online for you this week from the Daily Report.

On our Facebook page is a slide show of before and after pictures of the homeless encampment near the Fulton County Courthouse/Gold Dome area. The associated story about the clearing of the people camped there, by staff reporter Greg Land, is here.

There are videos of arguments before the Georgia Supreme Court in Kesterson v. Jarrett, a case about whether a trial judge may exclude from the courtroom a plaintiff whose disabilities or disfigured features may attract undue attention from jurors. Reported by staff reporter Aly Palmer (subscription required).

Also before the Georgia Supreme Court this week, and on video, were oral arguments in Formal Advisory Opinion No. 10-1, a debate on how to govern public defenders’ handling of client conflicts. Story (subscription required) also by Palmer.

Stop by Daily Report Multimedia often for unique, legal-oriented media. And be sure to sign-up for our twice daily e-news alerts. Top right of the homepage, in red. No subscription needed for our news alerts. They’re free.

Thank you for reading and viewing all the unique media offered by the Daily Report. There’s always more to come.

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.

The sudden appearance after all these years of Newt Gingrich’s first divorce records, dredged-up by CNN from the Carroll County, GA courthouse depths to prove or disprove Gingrich campaign claims, raises questions about how the documents were handled by Georgia courthouse personnel.

According to CNN:

Retired clerk Kenneth Skinner told CNN his deputy took Gingrich’s file out of the public records room around 1994, “when he (Gingrich) became the center of attention,” because Skinner feared tampering and theft.

“During these years, you had to make sure those papers were there,” Skinner said. “People could go in those files and get things out. We didn’t have enough security to control it.”

Having been told, initially, that Gingrich’s Carroll County divorce records were “sealed” CNN pressed the current Carroll County clerk on the matter, who then made a call to the retired clerk Skinner to ask about the papers’ whereabouts, whereupon the papers were located and handed over to CNN.

Last week, CNN obtained the folder containing the filings from the 1980 divorce, after initially being told that the divorce documents were sealed. The folder had been stashed away for years in a Carroll County, Georgia, court clerk’s drawer.

Alan Lee, the Carroll County Superior and State courts clerk, confirmed the divorce records were never sealed. Finding the original papers, first requested by Bloomberg and then CNN last week, was simply a matter of locating the box of paperwork in the Carroll County records room, not a drawer.

Being a relatively new clerk to the Carroll County court Lee wasn’t sure if the papers were on-site or off-site, but after the conversation with the retired deputy clerk and poking around for hours through cavernous spaces in the courthouse’s basement, a box of Gingrich’s divorce filings was finally located.

“All but one motion appeared to be the original documents,” said Lee. “It was in there, it was just finding it.”

The new clerk stressed that all the Gingrich divorce paperwork is now right by his side in his office… for easy access to whomever requests copies. And for safekeeping and storage purposes.

UPDATE, 1/2/12: Georgia attorney and blogger, Craig Hardegree, details how he (first) obtained the divorce records from the Carroll County court in a Daily Kos blog post here.

How does a law office send out holiday cards? Click to find out.