A convicted terrorist who plotted from his prison cell to behead federal agents and witnesses was sentenced to life in prison earlier today by a federal judge in Raleigh, N.C.

U.S. District Senior Judge W. Earl Britt  sentenced Hysen Sherifi, 29, to life for what federal prosecutors said was a “sinister murder for hire plot” against six witnesses, including three FBI agents, who had testified against him during his 2011  trial, the U.S. Justice Department in Washington announced.

Britt also sentenced co-defendants Shkumbin Sherifi, 23, to three years and Nevine Aly Elshiekh, 48, to 3 ½  years in prison for their roles in the plot.  Federal prosecutors said that the two men pleaded guilty in November to a charge of conspiring to engage in a murder-for-hire plot and testified at the elder Sherifi’s trial last year on the murder-for-hire charges.  Shkumbin Sherifi is the younger brother of Hysen Sherifi; Elshiekh was a local school teacher who assisted the elder Sherifi brother in raising funds to hire an assassin to kill the six witnesses.

In 2011, Hysen Sherifi – a Kosovo native living in Raleigh who had become a permanent legal resident of the United States — was convicted of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, kill federal personnel and murder or otherwise harm people in a foreign country, as well as multiple counts of possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence. He was serving a 45-year prison sentence.

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A former vice president and senior commercial loan officer of the failed FirstCity Bank of Stockbridge was sentenced earlier this week to more than seven years in federal prison for his role in the bank’s 2009 collapse.

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones on Tuesday also ordered Clayton Coe to pay $19.6 million in restitution, a punishment shared with other banking officers who have been convicted in connection with the bank’s failure.

Coe pleaded guilty last year to charges of bank fraud and making false statements.  His attorney, Richard Rice Jr., declined to comment on the case.

Coe is the third Stockbridge bank officer to plead guilty to criminal charges associated with the bank’s demise.  Last year, Mark Conner – the bank’s former chairman, president and CEO – pleaded guilty to charges that he had conspired with Coe and the bank’s former attorney  to routinely mislead federal and state bank regulators to conceal a scheme in which he reaped more than $7 million, federal prosecutors said. Conner is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence.

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A late push by many firms jockeying for position pushed the Legal Food Frenzy way past its goal of $55,000 in online donations on Friday.

As of 5:15 p.m., the Georgia legal community had raised $59,656.20 for the state’s food banks, which can stretch those funds into nearly $420,000 worth of food for hungry people.

Final results in the competition among legal groups are not available yet, as actual food and cash donations will be collected next week.  And the online results could change as the final hours of the contest tick by, given how close the top competitors are.

For now, however, Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton has regained its lead, with $6,555 in online donations.  It eclipsed Georgia Tech’s legal department, which has $6,021.  King & Spalding holds a narrow lead on Alston & Bird for third place, with $5,575 over A&B’s $5,530.

The rest of the four-digit field looks like this:

DeKalb County Solicitor-General: $4,373.45

Georgia Department of Law: $3,815

Southern Company/Georgia Power legal department: $2,900

Hunton & Williams: $2,540

Atlanta Legal Aid Society: $1,470

Coca-Cola Co. legal department: $1,375

Kutak Rock: $1,285

Siemon Law Firm: $1,220

Rogers & Hardin: $1,170

Daily Report: $1,152.

For more information or to donate, go to this site: http://engage.acfb.org/site/TR/LegalFoodFrenzy/GeorgiaLegalFoodFrenzy?fr_id=1560&pg=entry

A judge dropped disorderly conduct charges against a woman arrested for cursing at police, according to Cynthia Counts, one of her defense attorneys.

Counts called the decision by Cobb County State Court Judge Melodie Clayton a “First Amendment victory.” Counts delivered that news to the Daily Report in an email with this subject line: You can say “F— the police” without violating the law.”

According to Counts, Amy Barnes admits to making obscene statements Easter Sunday 2012, when she saw two Cobb County police officers questioning a burglary suspect about 7 p.m. on Austell Road. As she was riding by on her bicycle, Barnes said, among other things, “F— the police,” and “police suck,” Counts said, calling the statements “a protest of police abuse.”

“Upon hearing her statements, the officers left the suspect to pursue Ms. Barnes, who they stopped and arrested,” said Counts. The burglary suspect got away. Barnes was arrested and taken to jail, charged with one count of disorderly conduct under O.C.G.A. § 16-11-39(a)(4), which bars “without provocation” the use of “obscene and vulgar and profane language in the presence of a person under the age of 14 years which threatens an immediate breach of the peace.”

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The Council of Superior Court Judges of Georgia has new leadership, and they are women.

Chatham County Superior Court Judge Louisa Abbot started her term as president on Wednesday. Cobb County Superior Court Judge Mary Staley is president-elect, and Appalachian Judicial Circuit Superior Court Chief Judge Brenda Weaver is secretary-treasurer. Their terms last until April 30, 2014.

Abbot earned her law degree from the University of Georgia in 1982 and was appointed to Superior Court in the Eastern Judicial Circuit in October 2000. During the last four years, she was chairwoman of the council’s uniform rules committee and she  is a past-president of the Savannah Bar Association and the Georgia Bar Foundation.  Governor Nathan Deal reappointed her chairwoman of the Georgia Child Support Commission earlier this year.

Staley, who graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1979, began her legal career as an assistant Cobb County district attorney. She was elected to the Cobb County State Court in 1983 and was elected to superior court in 1992.

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Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter denied prosecutors’ request for a gag order in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating case Friday, blasting District Attorney Paul Howard and the special investigators he appointed for numerous public statements asserting that former APS Superintendant Beverly Hall and 34 co-defendants had engaged in a massive cheating conspiracy.

“Do ya’ll believe in the concept of presumption of innocence?” Baxter asked Senior Assistant District Attorney Christopher Quinn, who was supporting a motion to bar any attorneys or their clients from discussing the case outside of court.

“These folks have been vilified and tried in the court of public opinion,” said Baxter, “and your office has pretty much led the charge.”

Baxter pointed to an hour-long press conference Howard held when the indictments were announced in March, as well as numerous statements to the press by former Georgia Attorney General Michael Bowers, one of Howards’s specially appointed district attorneys, and asked Quinn why his office was suddenly so concerned about anyone making outside comments on the case.

“It may be very difficult, based on what’s gone on, to find a jury that can give these folks the presumption of innocence,” Baxter said.

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Chatham County Superior Court Judge Louisa Abbot started her term as president on Wednesday. Cobb County Superior Court Judge Mary Staley is president-elect, and Appalachian Judicial Circuit Superior Court Chief Judge Brenda Weaver is secretary-treasurer. Their terms last until April 30, 2014.

Abbot earned her law degree from the University of Georgia in 1982 and was appointed to superior court in the Eastern Judicial Circuit in October 2000. During the last four years, she was chairwoman of the council’s Uniform Rules Committee and is a past-president of the Savannah Bar Association and the Georgia Bar Foundation.  Governor Nathan Deal reappointed her chairwoman of the Georgia Child Support Commission earlier this year.

Staley, who graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1979, began her legal career as an assistant Cobb County district attorney. She was elected to the Cobb County State Court in 1983 and was elected to superior court in 1992.

Weaver served as an Associate Juvenile Court Judge for the Appalachian Judicial Circuit from 1991 until her appointment as chief judge of the juvenile court in 1995. A year later, she was appointed to the superior court, where she presides over its felony drug court.

Weaver is also an administrative law judge, a member of the Judicial Qualifications Commission and chairwoman of the Council of Superior Court Judges’ Accountability and Treatment Courts Committee. She earned her law degree from the now closed Woodrow Wilson College of Law in 1983.

The three judges will lead the council, which is composed of the state’s 207 superior court judges and more than 70 retired judges, as it assists trial courts with budgeting, legislation, uniform rules, bench publications and continuing judicial education. They also will serve on the Judicial Council of Georgia with representatives from other courts.   Kathleen Baydala Joyner

Georgia’s legal community scooped up $12,000 for hungry people on Thursday, putting the $55,000 goal for online donations in the Legal Food Frenzy within reach.

As of 6 p.m. Thursday, the second annual effort to raise the state’s food banks had collected $48,239.

One day remains in the competition among legal organizations to see which one can raise the most amount of food per employee, with awards given among varying types and sizes of legal groups.  Each $1 raised counts as four pounds of food in the competition.  More importantly, the food banks can stretch each $1 donated into more than $7 worth of food.

The winners will be determined after organizers add online donations to cash donations and actual canned food donated by each competing group.  Much could change in the final results, as last year more than half of the $107,000 donated did not come through the online route.

Nonetheless, the online donation action is the most fun to watch for competitors, so here is the penultimate leaderboard.

Georgia Tech’s Office of Legal Affairs remained in first place, with $5,881. But Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, which had led until Tech’s group vaulted from nowhere to the top yesterday, was closing in. It had collected $5,210, for second place.

King & Spalding, a slow starter, pushed into third place, with $4,880, edging Alston & Bird, which had $4,855.

Other teams above the four-digit mark were:

The Office of the DeKalb Solicitor-General, $2,910; Southern Company/Georgia Power Company Legal, $2,695; Georgia Department of Law, $2,650; Hunton & Williams, $1,840; Atlanta Legal Aid Society, $1,435; The Coca-Cola Company Legal Department, $1,275; and the Daily Report, $1,152.

McCurdy & Candler was agonizingly close to $1,000, with $997.

Donations can be made here: http://engage.acfb.org/site/TR/LegalFoodFrenzy/GeorgiaLegalFoodFrenzy?fr_id=1560&pg=entry

The University of Georgia School of Law has named its graduation keynote speaker: Judge Beverly B. Martin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

A law school news release said Martin is a 1981 Georgia alumna. Prior to joining the Eleventh Circuit in 2010, she served for nearly a decade as a U.S. District Court judge for the Northern District of Georgia. Martin served as a U.S. attorney and assistant U.S. attorney in the Middle District of Georgia from 1994 to 2000 and represented the state of Georgia as an assistant attorney general in various litigation matters from 1984 to 1994. She also practiced at the firm Martin & Snow in Macon after graduating from law school. Martin earned her bachelor’s degree from Stetson University in 1976 before coming to Athens to pursue her law degree at UGA.

The graduation is scheduled for May 18. The law school announced 230 students will receive their juris doctor, while six master of laws candidates will be recognized for completing one year of graduate legal study. The processional will begin at 10 a.m. on the quadrangle in front of the law school on UGA’s North Campus. In the event of rain, the ceremony will be moved to Stegeman Coliseum.

The state’s new juvenile code will take effect in January 2014.

Governor Nathan Deal signed House Bill 242, which overhauls statutes dealing with neglected and delinquent youth, this morning at a detention center in Dalton.

The legislation also includes several recommendations by the governor’s criminal justice reform council aimed at keeping low-risk youth offenders out of detention centers, including creating a two-tiered system of designated felonies and creating more community-based treatment programs.

“We acted because Georgia could not afford its own numbers,” Deal said in a written statement. “Not when we have more than half of all youth offenders ending up back in a detention center or prison within three years. Not when we have each youth in a detention center costing Georgia taxpayers $90,000 or more every year and not when 40 percent of juveniles in detention facilities are considered a low risk to reoffend.”

The bill calls for allotting $5 million as incentives for communities  to create community-based treatment programs, which would give judges more sentencing options. The new laws also are expected to save the state $85 million over the next five years and curb the need to open two new residential detention centers for juvenile offenders.

The governor’s criminal justice reform council, which is made up of lawyers, judges, lawmakers and law enforcement officers, worked closely with the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Those organizations also assisted the state with its adult criminal justice reforms last year.

“This legislation marks a turning point in how Georgia approaches crime and punishment,” said Adam Gelb, director of Pew’s public safety performance project, in a written statement. “Building on last year’s criminal justice reforms, state leaders again reached bipartisan consensus by using data and research to craft policies aimed at making sure Georgia’s tax dollars are producing the best possible public safety results.”

Research conducted by the council found that the state gave the Department of Juvenile Justice $300 million in fiscal year 2013, of which nearly two-thirds went to operating facilities where juvenile offenders were locked up. During that same time, more than 65 percent of youth released from those facilities committed new offenses within three years—and the rate had increased since 2003.