Down Home Justice

Just before the first of the year there was a party up in the northern Atlanta suburbs. Some kids got arrested for drinking.

As it turns out the party was at the home of a lawyer who is (temporarily, of her own choice, not) a magistrate judge. Attending were other local legal luminaries including people from the local solicitor’s office, the people that prosecute such under age drinking.

According to the police report the lawyer/magistrate threatened the responding police with her connections and said that it was better that the juveniles were drinking at her home that out on the roads.

So, soon after the affair, she undertook the representation of one of the underage drinkers and worked out the following plea arrangement with the solicitor’s office before the police report had been completed: $150 fee, alcohol counseling and a 150 hours of baseball practice with the college baseball team that he was a member of as community service, with expungement of the matter after completion of the requirements of the sentence.

When questioned by the Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter, the solicitor allowed as how he might change some of his policies in future cases.