Georgia Supreme Court ruling invalidates thousands of arrest warrants

The Supreme Court stunned Georgia judges and probation companies last week with its ruling, which found that state law doesn’t authorize putting misdemeanor probation sentences on hold if a probationer stops reporting as required. Issuing arrest warrants and stopping the clock on probation sentences has been a standard practice for years in the courts that handle traffic offenses, DUIs and other misdemeanor charges.

The decision means thousands of people accused of disappearing before they completed probation requirements will no longer face an arrest over those failures. Some are being released from jail.

Judges and probation companies found themselves digging through their files and searching their computer systems in recent days, finding all the arrest warrants tied to cases where the original probation term had expired. Georgia’s probation providers reported more than 130,000 outstanding warrants at the end of last year, according to an AJC study of probation reports. The majority of those warrants are tied to cases beyond the original probation term and are invalid under the court decision.

Judges in a few jurisdictions already cancelled older warrants, based on a lower court decision that was appealed to the Supreme Court. Most, however, waited to see what the Supreme Court would do.

“Here in DeKalb County, we are recalling all of our probation warrants where the time has expired,” said DeKalb State Court Judge Wayne M. Purdom.

Purdom said his court has closed about 4,100 cases with sentences dating before January 1, 2011. The court is still researching another 1,500 more-recent cases, and Purdom said he expects about half of those will probably be closed, too.

Nelly Withers, chief judge at the high-volume DeKalb Recorders Court, said it is recalling outstanding warrants on halted probation cases, and they will be dismissed.

Judges at Atlanta Municipal Court are scheduled to meet next week to discuss how to proceed: The court has 18,000 misdemeanor probation warrants that will have to be studied, according to reports analyzed by the AJC.

Judges said the dismissal of thousands of pending warrants and the inability to put future probation sentences on hold will allow people to get away with dodging their punishments. Judicial organizations plan to push for a new law that would specifically authorize the halts — know as “tolling” — when the Georgia General Assembly convenes in January.

Duluth Municipal Court Judge Charles Barrett said he stopped tolling cases last year, after the lower court ruling found that practice was not authorized. He also dismissed warrants tied to cases where the original probation term expired. But he would like to see the state change the law to allow tolling. Otherwise, he said, there’s no way to hold offenders accountable if they leave the state or the country and fail to complete probation.

But some view the end of tolling as the end of a practice that had become abusive.

Lawyers challenging Georgia’s probation system in the case before the Supreme Court said the decision will eliminate injustices wrapped inside many of the pending warrants, which never expire. The lawyers said private probation companies with profit motives often filed warrants that were not appropriate and did so without giving proper notice to the defendant.

“There were hundreds, if not thousands, of people who had no idea that any probation warrant had ever been issued against them and only found out years later when they had a minor traffic violation and ended up being incarcerated,” said Jack Long, an Augusta attorney whose lawsuits were before the Supreme Court.

Sarah Geraghty, a senior attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights, said there are likely hundreds of people across the state in jail due to probation revocations tied to cases that have expired, now that tolling is not authorized. She said they must be released.

Some judges aren’t happy about these releases, but Geraghty says the public should not be concerned. “These are misdemeanor and traffic cases, and a huge number of people have had their sentences illegally tolled solely because they don’t have money to pay exorbitant fines, fees and surcharges,” she said.

The case before the Supreme Court challenged the Georgia law authorizing local courts to hire private companies to handle misdemeanor probation cases. While the court found that current law doesn’t authorize tolling, the Supreme Court’s opinion was a split decision that found it is constitutional for local courts to hire private companies to handle their probation operations.

“This decision, while it did not go as far as I would have liked, has improved justice for tens of thousands, and maybe this case will make our courts more aware of the fact that abuses have been widespread,” Long said.

In Georgia, misdemeanor probation officers make sure that people convicted of the more serious misdemeanors — DUI, shoplifting, and some domestic violence offenses — complete required classes or pay restitution. But in many cases misdemeanor probation in Georgia is used as a payment plan, allowing people who can’t afford their traffic fines on the day of court more time to pay. Georgia’s use of “pay-only” probation is controversial, because probation fees can cost as much as the original fine and some probation offices have been found to improperly threaten poor people with warrants if they fall behind on payments.

A state audit released earlier this year found failures and abuses in the way misdemeanor probation is playing out in some local courts. Gov. Nathan Deal has asked his Criminal Justice Reform Council to study probation and recommend legislation to address the problems.