A federal grand jury in Atlanta has indicted a Fayetteville man who served as a U.S. Army captain in Saudi Arabia on charges of conspiracy and theft in connection with the alleged embezzlement of more than $2.7  million from federal bank accounts in Riyadh, the U.S. Attorney of the Northern District of Georgia announced today.

The grand jury on May 1 indicted former Capt. Jasen Minter, 41, of Fayetteville and Louis Nock, 45, of Orlando – who served as  a senior non-commissioned Sergeant First Class with Minter in Saudi Arabia, U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said.

Nock was arraigned Monday and Minter was arraigned today in federal court in Atlanta.   Both defendants are currently free on bond, according to federal prosecutors.

According to court records and federal prosecutors, Minter and Nock were finance officers assigned to the U.S. Military Training Mission in Saudi Arabia in 2006  when they allegedly embezzled funds intended to finance the Training Mission’s finance office – which provided banking services to U.S. military personnel living in Saudi Arabia.

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Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens said government defense lawyers, including those in his office, will be able to avoid “trial by ambush” now that the state’s new sunshine laws are in effect.

Changes to the state’s Open Records Act in House Bill 397, which was signed by the governor last month, still allow litigants to seek government records that may be used in a lawsuit. But they also require the litigant to notify government lawyers at the same time as making the request.

An earlier version of the bill prohibited litigants from using the Open Records Act as a way to circumvent discovery, but the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association successfully lobbied against the ban, arguing that it would infringe on a citizen’s right to access public documents.

GTLA, local government attorneys and Olens forged a compromise that they said prevented a litigant from using evidence obtained through an open records request without the prior knowledge of a government agency or its lawyers.

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A posse of Atlanta lawyers plus a minister are heading to Washington on Monday at the invitation of President Obama to address the high judicial vacancy rate in federal courts.

The lawyers are Stephen Bright of the Southern Center for Human Rights; former State Bar president Jeff Bramlett, a partner at Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore; David Dreyer of Chamberlain Hrdlicka; and Neil Kinkopf, a law professor at Georgia State University. They will be joined by the Rev. Timothy McDonald, who is the president of Concerned Black Clergy.

The five Atlantans are among 150 supporters from 27 states whom the president has called to Washington for a strategy session with administration officials on pushing more of Obama’s nominees through the Republican logjam in the Senate.

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A measure that aims to close down stores that run casino-like computer games is now law.

Governor Nathan Deal on Wednesday signed into law Senate Bill 431, which closes loopholes in Georgia’s gambling statutes used by phone card and Internet café businesses to offer games including slots and roulette. Deal ordered a crackdown on these stores last August when he called on the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to target them with existing anti-gambling statutes.

The new law’s constitutionality may soon be challenged in court. Attorney Ed Garland, who is representing the owner of a phone card
company who was indicted in DeKalb County in March, has said the measure violates equal protection rights because it carves out an exception for publicly traded companies, such as McDonald’s, that have total assets of more than $100 million.

Businesses that ran the games claimed they were legitimate under Georgia laws allowing for promotional sweepstakes, similar to McDonald’s Monopoly game. These businesses provided gaming credits to customers who bought calling cards or Internet time, and those credits could be used to win cash prizes through computerized versions of Las Vegas-style games.

According to the new law, promotions that use computers, mechanical devices or electronic devices are considered unlawful lotteries.

Democratic Party of Georgia political director Rashad Richey has filed a libel suit against the webmasters of two political websites, claiming he has been labeled a repeat criminal offender and subjected to a concerted effort to force him out of his job.

Richey’s suit says online postings by Andre Walker, webmaster for Georgia Politics Unfiltered, and re-posting of those entries by Melanie Goux, who oversees the Blog for Democracy website, have falsely asserted that he is a “recidivist,” and that Walker’s multiple postings detailing Richey’s brushes with the law, coupled with assertions that he is a “criminal” and “jailbird” constitute slander, libel and defamation.

The suit, filed yesterday in Fulton County Superior Court, also names former DPG official Jane Bradshaw as a defendant, accusing he of emailing the stories around and organizing meetings to discuss them.

Since last month, Walker has posted several online stories detailing Richey’s arrests on misdemeanor charges of criminal trespass and simple battery, and his court-ordered child-support payments.

The suit, filed by Bell & Washington partner Quinton Washington and Mabra Firm attorney Reginald Lewis, includes alleged quotes from Walker’s website lampooning Richey as “Rashad Richey the Recidivist on the Democratic payroll,” and a “criminal” who “has a history of making poor personal decisions.”

“The direct intention of [the postings] was to cause Plaintiff to be fired from his job and to injure him personally and professionally,” it says.

There was no immediate response to message emailed to both blogs or to a phone message left for Bradshaw.

Georgia could see its incarceration rate and costs lowered over the next five years as recently signed legislation kicks in, channeling low-level, nonviolent offenders away from prison and toward treatment and rehabilitation programs.

Gov. Nathan Deal signed the criminal justice reform bill (House Bill 1176) this afternoon in the north wing of the Capitol. Among the bill’s provisions are the creation of statewide drug and mental health court programs, increased felony thresholds for property crimes such as theft and shoplifting and a weight-based system of drug possession prosecution that allows for lower sentences for smaller amounts.

Estimates released in late March pegged the state’s cost savings at $264 million over the next five years.Later, in front of a smaller audience, Deal signed Senate Bill 383, which creates specific provisions for conducting international commercial arbitration in Georgia. Prior to the bill’s passage by the 2012 Georgia General Assembly, Deal voiced support for a multi-law firm coalition seeking to make Atlanta a premier venue for alternative dispute resolution among international companies.

The various provisions of the criminal justice overhaul legislation will go into effect at different times. The statewide accountability court systems and the new felony thresholds will start this July. The weight-based drug possession scheme will start on July 1, 2013, for Schedule I and II drugs and on July 1, 2014, for Schedule III through V drugs.

The international commercial arbitration bill goes into effect on July 1.

State Bar of Georgia President Ken Shigley attended both bill signings. Both measures found support from the bar.

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It’s one of those unspoken Southern social rules; one just does not treat one’s Masters tickets like a commodity. If shared at all, the coveted passes to Augusta National are gifted only to a business associate first, then perhaps to a friend or family member.

Standing out alongside the road hawking one’s Masters tickets? Inconceivable. Yet it happens, and Augusta takes the re-selling of Masters tickets matter very seriously – going so far as to assign narcotics agents to work undercover during the tournament to assist in ferreting out the ill-mannered.

According to the August Chronicle, selling and buying of Masters tickets was so prevalent this year that more than 30 cases of “disorderly conduct” associated with the tickets landed on the desk of Harry B. James, the solicitor for the Richmond County Magistrate Court. And other than the case of one senior seller, a Jasper B. Sojourner of Port St. Lucie, Fla., James has said to all the others so charged… see you in a Georgia courtroom.

The newspaper reports: “As for the others with outstanding cases, James said they will have to show up in Magistrate Court next week if they intend to fight the charges. He said it didn’t matter that some lived as far away as Canada and California.

“‘If they don’t show up the judge can issue a bench warrant or they can forfeit their bond,’ he said.”

Gov. Nathan Deal’s Judicial Nominating Commission today put out a formal call for names of would-be state Supreme Court justices.

Today’s posting marks the official beginning of the process of picking a successor to Presiding Justice George H. Carley, who announced in October that he will retire from the state Supreme Court on July 17. The departing justice has urged Deal to have an appointee ready to be sworn in right away, promising he would have his office cleaned out.

Per the JNC’s usual practice, attorneys can nominate themselves or others, and non-lawyers can submit nominations, as well. The names should be sent to the Judicial Nominating Commission, c/o Dana McGuire, 600 Peachtree Street, N.E., Suite 5200, Atlanta, Ga. 30308-2216, by fax to (404) 962-6919 or by email c/o dana.mcguire@troutmansanders.com.

To move forward in the process, nominees must complete the JNC’s application package, which can be found on its website. In a departure from the commission’s recent practice, in which there is some gap between the nominations deadline and the application deadline so that last-minute nominees can complete their submission, the two deadlines for the Supreme Court vacancy will be the same: May 25.

The commission will conduct interviews on May 31 at the State Bar’s annual meeting in Savannah. Today’s announcement says the commission will recommend to Deal a short list of up to five people.

Governor Deal signs HB 954 into law as the bill's supporters watch.

Today was sensitive social issue day at the governor’s office, with Gov. Nathan Deal signing into law bills addressing abortion and assisted suicide.

HB 954 generally prohibits abortion after 20 weeks from the date of fertilization. An earlier version of the bill made exceptions to the ban only to preserve the life of an unborn child or to “[a]vert the death of the pregnant woman or avert serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.”

In a last-minute compromise, lawmakers added an exception for “medically futile” pregnancies, in which the unborn child “has a profound and irremediable congenital or chromosomal anomaly that is incompatible with sustaining life after birth.”

The final version of the bill signed by Deal still specifies that a woman’s mental or emotional health, including the prospect of suicide, cannot be a basis for meeting the mother’s health exception.

Opponents of the legislation argued that the bill violated Supreme Court precedent on the grounds that the 20-week mark is prior to fetal viability (a premise challenged by the bill’s lead sponsor, Rep. Doug McKillip, R-Athens) and that the women’s health exception is too narrow. But most of the similar laws passed by other states in recent years have not been challenged in court.

HB 1114 bans assisted suicide, making it a felony to help someone take their own life. The legislation was proposed after the Georgia Supreme Court in February struck down as unconstitutional the state’s statute that made it a felony to help someone end his life after first publicly offering such assistance. Noting then that assisted suicide wasn’t banned outright, the court said the old statute impermissibly targeted free speech.