"They Are Just Doing Their Jobs," Or Real Georgia Justice

The American system of government supposedly is built upon checks and balances. The notion is that accountability must be at every point, and those who have great amounts of authority and power especially must be held accountable.

In the justice system, those in elected offices, such as judges and district attorneys, are supposed to be held accountable by voters. Whether or not that is the case is another matter, but even then, prosecutors and judges are supposed to be held accountable by higher governing bodies.

For example, voters in Durham County, North Carolina, elected Michael B. Nifong to his position as DA in November, 2006, but in June, 2007, the North Carolina State Bar voted to strip this miscreant of his law license because of his outrageous and dishonest conduct in the infamous Duke Lacrosse Case. Had the Bar not acted, this lawbreaker would have been running wild in North Carolina for four years and who knows the damage he would have caused to innocent lives?

This brings us to Georgia, and specifically the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit. Who monitors the principals in this district? The voters supposedly do, although Georgia has the infamous "Missouri System" in which once a judge is elected, and as long as he chooses to stay in office, the voters vote "up" or "down" on his continued presence. Obviously, that is NOT a real election.

Now, no sane person really believes that "judge" Brian Outhouse deserves to spend another minute on the bench; the guy already has demonstrated that he absolutely despises the law and all judicial canons, so he has no right to continue being the Total Disgrace that he is. Nonetheless, I only can hope that most voters will vote "no" for him in the 2012 election, although that is unlikely, given that the "Missouri Plan" exists precisely to keep bad judged in office. (The claim was that it would "remove judges from politics," but that is nonsense. If judges are government employees, then judges are political, period.)

Likewise, prosecutors also are elected, and at least Franklin claims not to be running at the next election. Nonetheless, if there were justice in Georgia, Franklin would be on the bread lines now looking for work. Furthermore, his henchmen, "Alberto-Facebook" and "The Man" have been on the job longer than "Buzzare" and apparently they are the ones actually running the office.

Supposedly, they work at the pleasure of the DA, but in the LMJC, the civil "servants" are the ones who have "captured" the prosecutorial apparatus. Thus, if they are not going to lose their jobs at the behest of the DA, then the only other place where they can be disciplined is at the Georgia State Bar.

More than a month ago, I talked to a couple of women who work for the State Bar and who are instrumental in making recommendations that attorneys be disciplined or even disbarred. What they told me regarding Arnt and Gregor was not encouraging. One woman said to me, "She (Tonya) was acquitted, wasn't she?" Then she added, regarding the prosecution, "They were just doing their jobs."

I replied, "Are you telling me that their jobs are suborning perjury? Are you telling me that a defendant having to spend upwards of a million dollars to defend herself against ludicrous charges is no harm, no foul?"

The woman was not happy with my comments. Furthermore, she intimated that she had no problem with Arnt's little message on Facebook and other public statements, despite the prohibitions from the State Bar regarding prosecutorial misconduct on those specific issues.

In other words, the woman to whom I spoke was saying to me: Our job is to protect prosecutors no matter how much they break the law and no matter how outrageous their conduct might be.

This is pretty typical of Georgia, from what I have seen. There really are no checks and balances in the system, and this is a long-held legacy that goes back to the Jim Crow years.

Never forget that Georgia gave us the infamous Moores Ford murders of 1946 in which a mob of whites literally executed two black men and two black women, one of whom was pregnant. I mean that they tied these people to trees, and then shot them point-black, execution style, and not one person ever was prosecuted for it.

The legacy of Georgia Justice goes back to the Leo Frank lynching, in which an innocent man was murdered by (What else?) a Georgia mob for the murder of Mary Phagan. (She was killed by someone else, but Georgia "justice" tends to concentrate on the wrong people. The ringleaders in Frank's murder included "included a former governor, a senator's son, a Methodist minister, a state legislator, and a former state Superior Court judge." Sounds like business as usual in Georgia.)

So, if "Alberto-Facebook" and "The Man," along with "judge" Brian Outhouse get off scot-free for their lawbreaking, their lying, their subornation of perjury, and their acquiescence in fabricating documents to fill holes in their "evidence" against Tonya Craft, don't be surprised. The Georgia State Bar is very efficient at disbarring regular private attorneys; it refuses even to consider action against prosecutors, no matter how dishonest and how outrageous their conduct might be.

Georgia officials claim that they have "moved on" from Leo Frank and from Moore's Ford, but that is a lie, a big lie. They are no different now from when state "justice" was run by lynch mobs. When the woman from the Georgia State Bar confirmed to me that subornation perjury and lying was just another day at the office for Georgia prosecutors, and that she was fine with it, I realized that nothing has changed in Georgia, no matter how many times the officials try to tell us differently.

Mike Nifong's disbarment was the first time a prosecutor in that state had been so disciplined. It can happen in Georgia, but ONLY if people raise hell, and lots of it. I hope that Tonya Craft can receive justice. I hope Eric Echols can receive justice. I hope Ron DeLaby can receive justice. I hope Brad Wade can receive justice.

The problem is that they all have dealt with Georgia justice, and one hopes that sooner or later, the people at the Georgia State Bar begin to realize that their coddling of a real criminal class of people -- Georgia prosecutors -- is taking its toll. Justice Louis Brandeis once said that "sunlight is the best disinfectant," and I only can hope that some sunlight can clean the nasty mess that is the "justice" system in Georgia.