Daily Report: 120 Year Anniversary: Moments in 2010

Jan. 31, 2000 — Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis (pictured center with Donald F. Samuel, left, and Max C. Richardson Jr.) and two other men are charged with murder following the stabbing deaths of two men outside a Buckhead nightclub following the Super Bowl. Lewis pleads guilty to a misdemeanor count of obstruction of justice in return for his testimony against the other men, who are acquitted. Lewis is sentenced by Judge Alice D. Bonner to a year of probation and fined $250,000 by the NFL.

April 19, 2000 — The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta rules that Elián Gonzalez, a minor Cuban refugee, must stay in the U.S. until his extended family in Miami can appeal for an asylum hearing.

June 1, 2000 — The 11th Circuit rules that Elián Gonzalez was too young to file for asylum. Judge J.L. Edmondson, joined by Judges Joel F. Dubina and Charles R. Wilson, writes that only Elian's father may speak for him and that his relatives lack legal standing.

Dec. 27, 2000 — Steven H. Sadow, the lawyer for one of the two men acquitted for the Super Bowl stabbings, is the Newsmaker of the Year. The win, according to the story, "molded his reputation as an aggressive, confrontational attorney who often makes little distinction among the prosecutors he faces in court, the witnesses he cross-examines, and the defense lawyers who may sit on his side of the table."

Jan. 11, 2001 — Fulton Superior Court Judge Wendy L. Shoob (pictured in 2004) declares the electric chair a cruel and unusual punishment. The Georgia Supreme Court upholds the ruling in October.

Jan. 31, 2001 — Gov. Roy Barnes signs House Bill 16 into law to change the Georgia state flag from one carrying the Confederate battle flag to one showing several flags from Georgia history. "Flaggers" will follow Barnes in his 2002 re-election campaign, and challenger Sonny Perdue promises to allow Georgians to vote on the flag. After Perdue wins election, the Legislature places a choice of flags on the ballot, but not the 1956 battle flag design that was so closely identified with the Confederacy.

May 10, 2001 — The U.S. Senate confirms King & Spalding partner and former U.S. attorney Larry D. Thompson (pictured, left in 1980s) as President George W. Bush's deputy attorney general. He serves until August 2003, then becomes the top lawyer at PepsiCo.

June 7, 2001 — U.S. District Judge Richard W. Story (pictured in 2009) gives final approval to Coca-Cola Co.'s $192.5 million settlement with its African-American employees over race discrimination claims. The case is Abdallah v. Coca-Cola.

Aug. 2, 2001 — A major turning point in the federal trial of the manager of The Gold Club and others on a host of charges that include money laundering, racketeering and credit card fraud: Manager Steve Kaplan pleads to one count of racketeering and is sentenced to 16 months in prison, ordered to forfeit ownership of the club to the federal government and to pay a $5 million fine. Thirteen other defendants plead to lesser charges and receive probation. Had Kaplan rejected a deal and been convicted, the federal government could have seized all of Kaplan's assets–worth a reported $50 million–and sent him to prison for 20 years. Testimony in the trial shows that athletes and celebrities were feted with sexual favors, but the overall case proves difficult for the government.

Oct. 10, 2001 — The 11th Circuit rules that author Alice Randall's book, "The Wind Done Gone," is a parody of Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind" and does not violate Mitchell's copyright. Pictured: Randall with her attorney Joseph M. Beck of Kilpatrick Stockton.

Nov. 28, 2001 — The Georgia Supreme Court rules that State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. should pay policyholders not only to repair damaged cars but also for the diminished value caused by accidents. The company subsequently agrees to pay $250 million to reimburse 700,000 Georgia policyholders who had filed collision claims with the insurer since December 1993. Allstate follows with a $9 million settlement.

Dec. 26, 2001 — Sally Quillian Yates, the assistant U.S. attorney heading the prosecution of alleged corruption at City Hall, is the Newsmaker of the Year. With several aides and associates already under indictment, charges against Mayor Bill Campbell seem imminent. In five years, Campbell will be convicted of tax evasion.

July 10, 2002 — After the trial moved to Albany to avoid effects of publicity in DeKalb County, former DeKalb Sheriff Sidney Dorsey (pictured right, with his attorney, Brian Steel) is convicted of murdering DeKalb Sheriff-elect Derwin Brown. He is given a life sentence.

Oct. 18, 2002 — The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals guts key rules of the Georgia Judicial Qualifications Commission that limit campaign speech for judicial candidates. "Negligent misstatements must be protected in order to give protected speech the 'breathing space' it requires," writes Judge Gerald B. Tjoflat. "The ability of an opposing candidate to correct negligent misstatements with more speech more than offsets the danger of a misinformed electorate that might result from tolerating negligent misstatements." The case, Weaver v. Bonner, grew out of the Atlanta litigator George Weaver's unsuccessful 1998 election challenge to Justice Leah Ward Sears.

Dec. 26, 2002 — Outgoing Gov. Roy E. Barnes is the Newsmaker of the Year. An editor's note explains Barnes' "near-$20 million campaign cache made him seem invincible. He was as powerful as any governor before him, as masterful an operator of the levers of government as any to play the game. But he played the game too well, some would say too brazenly, and it was his undoing. Barnes is legal newsmaker of the year because he lived the law of unintended consequences."

January 2003 — Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue (pictured center) orders Attorney General Thurbert E. Baker (right), a Democrat, to drop the state's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court of a lower-court ruling striking down a state Senate redistricting map that favors Democrats. Baker refuses, setting up a test over who controls the state's legal decisions.

April 10, 2003 — The Daily Report publishes the first installment of R. Robin McDonald's series on "bank robbery without a gun," about the burgeoning problem of mortgage fraud. The story shows how homeless men are recruited off the street, provided with a stolen identity and the false documentation necessary to obtain loans. Dozens have been charged in metro Atlanta since 2000 for defrauding lenders of more than $130 million through fraudulent mortgages. Fifty either have entered guilty pleas or been convicted and sentenced to terms ranging from probation to 12 years in prison. Among them are bank officers, mortgage brokers, two real estate agents, three attorneys, middlemen who orchestrated the fraudulent deals and straw buyers who, for a fee, appeared at real estate closings and lent their names and credit ratings to the fraudulent transactions.

June 26, 2003 — The U.S. Supreme Court votes 5-4 to revive the Georgia Senate map that a lower court had struck down as violating the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Writing for the majority, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the lower court should take another look at Georgia's map under a revised framework, one that allows states to redraw their legislative districts even if the result was the election of fewer minority lawmakers. But, O'Connor added, such maps would have to "achieve greater overall representation of a minority group by increasing the number of representatives sympathetic to the interests of minority voters."

Sept. 1, 2003 — Gwinnett County State Court Judge David M. Fuller (pictured) resigns after Fox 5 News reports that he spends long hours in a bar during the day. A reporter said he watched him consume 19 beers during one seven-hour visit to a bar.

Sept. 4, 2003 — The state Supreme Court issues Perdue v. Baker, which holds by a 5-2 vote that Gov. Sonny Perdue did not have the authority to order Attorney General Thurbert E. Baker to drop an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the state. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Norman S. Fletcher concluded that, although the governor and attorney general had "concurrent powers" over the state's litigation, the specific instructions of this particular redistricting law gave Baker the authority to decide how it should be defended. Justice George H. Carley writes a dissent declaring, "Only one official of the executive branch can control the course of litigation, and, according to the Constitution of this state, that official is the Governor."

Oct. 20, 2003 — Atlanta City Council votes to change the airport's name from Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in honor of the late Maynard Jackson, the city's first African-American mayor.

Dec. 3, 2003 — Stephen B. Bright, the director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, is the Newsmaker of the Year. He is "the catalyst behind the year's biggest legal story," the creation of the state public defender system. "Bright deserves the distinction because he forcibly made the case for why indigent defense, and why now. He took a time-worn problem and made time of the essence. Bright changed the facts on the ground, and because he did Georgia had little choice but to confront the long-crumbling state of indigent defense."

January 2004 — A Thai court orders the extradition of multimillionaire James Vincent Sullivan (pictured) so that he can stand trial for the 1987 murder of his estranged wife, Lita. Authorities found the businessman in Bangkok after the case was featured in 2002 on "America's Most Wanted." Lita McClinton Sullivan was shot to death when she opened the door of her Buckhead home for a man posing as a deliveryman with a box of roses. Fulton prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty. On March 13, 2006, he will be convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

April 22, 2004 — Malachi York of the Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, a quasi-religious sect, is sentenced to 135 years in prison for molesting boys and girls at the group's 476-acre compound in Eatonton.

June 28, 2004 — The U.S. Supreme Court votes 6-3 to hold that accused terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to challenge their detention in federal courts. Atlanta lawyers join the effort of the Center for Constitutional Rights to provide counsel to the detainees.

July 2004 — Republicans support former Cobb County Superior Court Judge G. Grant Brantley, who is challenging Justice Leah Ward Sears for her seat on the state Supreme Court. Democrats fund more than $150,000 of Sears' television advertising. Sears wins handily.

Dec. 27, 2004 — McCracken Poston is Newsmaker of the Year for his defense of Ray Brent Marsh, the Tri-State Crematory operator who discarded more than 300 bodies consigned to the North Georgia business: "Poston worked lots of angles ... from reminding the county it would have to raise property taxes to pay for a trial, to brokering a deal with the family's insurance company. ... An 8,000-year sentence authorities discussed at one point has ended in a plea bargain that should result in Marsh serving about four years. As for civil damages, the Marshes won't pay any. Instead, an insurance company will set aside money to help the Marsh family."

Jan. 14, 2005 — U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper rules that the Cobb County school board's decision to require stickers (pictured) be placed in science books warning that evolution is a theory is unconstitutional.

March 11, 2005 — Rape defendant Brian Nichols escapes from a holding cell at the Fulton County Courthouse, severely beating a guard and taking her pistol. He goes to the chambers of Fulton Superior Judge Rowland W. Barnes, who is presiding over his case. Nichols takes staff members hostage, then enters the courtroom and shoots and kills Barnes and court reporter Julie Ann Brandau. While fleeing the courthouse, Nichols shoots and kills Fulton Deputy Sgt. Hoyt Teasley. Later that day, he shoots and kills federal agent David Wilhelm. Nichols is captured the next day at a Gwinnett apartment, where he had forced a woman to let him in. She talks him into giving himself up.

March 30, 2005 – The full 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejects a petition by Terri Schiavo's parents to reconsider their arguments that the brain-damaged woman should be re-nourished immediately. Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr. of Atlanta writes that a law enacted by Congress and President George W. Bush on March 21 requiring federal courts to review the Schiavo case is unconstitutional and amounts to a threat to the independence of the judicial branch of government. Birch, a 1990 appointee of Bush's father, writes that "despite sincere and altruistic motivation, the legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people—our Constitution." Schiavo dies the next day.

April 2005 — A settlement is hatched between civil rights activist Rosa Parks and the hip-hop group Outkast and its record company, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, for using her name as the title to a song which includes profanity.

April 8, 2005 – Eric Rudolph (center in drawing, flanked by his lawyers), who planted bombs that killed a woman at the Olympics and a police officer at a Birmingham abortion clinic, pleads guilty and is given life in prison with no parole.

June 28, 2005 — Leah Ward Sears (pictured in 2005) becomes the first black woman chief justice of any supreme court in the country. Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court administers the oath.

John Marshall Law School receives provisional accreditation by the American Bar Association. The Georgia Supreme Court had told the state's night law schools in 1987 they had to get ABA approval or lose their state licensing. In 2009, John Marshall wins full ABA approval, giving Georgia five ABA-accredited law schools.

Oct. 18, 2005 — U.S. District Judge Harold L. Murphy blocks enforcement of Georgia's new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. Murphy finds that a $20 fee required to secure a driver's license or state identification card was an unconstitutional poll tax. The judge also notes the difficulties associated with travel from Georgia's 159 counties to one of the state's 56 driver's license centers in areas where mass transit is not generally available. And he dispatches defense arguments that Georgia voters without a photo ID could easily vote by absentee ballot, which requires no photo identification. The law will be written two more times before it passes constitutional muster.

Jan. 24, 2006 — Jury selection begins in former Atlanta mayor Bill Campbell's corruption trial. After a trial that extends into March, he is convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to two and a half years in prison.

March 29, 2006 — U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney assaults a Capitol policeman after he stops her from going around a security checkpoint. Two days later, she will announce at a news conference that she was a victim of racial profiling and inappropriate touching. On April 6, at the urging of Democratic leaders, she will apologize to the Capitol police.

July 12, 2006 — Former Georgia Secretary of Education Linda Schrenko, pictured, pleads guilty to stealing more than $500,000 in education funds. She is sentenced to eight years in prison and ordered to pay restitution.

December 2006 — Georgia Supreme Court Justice Carol W. Hunstein, left, who fended off an aggressive challenge from J. Michael Wiggins, right, in the November election, is named the Daily Report's Newsmaker of the Year.

March 24, 2007 — Former 911 operator Lynn Turner is convicted of murdering her firefighter boyfriend by poisoning him with antifreeze. She already was serving a life sentence for the antifreeze poisoning and killing in 1995 of her police officer husband. She will kill herself in her prison cell in August 2010.

Aug. 27, 2007 — Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick pleads guilty in federal court in Virginia to dogfighting charges. He will be suspended from the NFL and will serve 19 months in prison. He will return to professional football in 2009 and signs with the Philadelphia Eagles.

Oct. 20, 2007 — When metro and state water supplies dwindle during a historically lengthy drought, Gov. Sonny Perdue declares a state of emergency for the northern third of Georgia and asks President George W. Bush to declare it a major disaster area. The 38,000-acre Lake Lanier reservoir, which supplies more than 3 million residents with water, is down to a three months' supply from depletion.

Feb. 5, 2008 — Georgia suffers a major setback in its fight over water with Alabama and Florida when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia throws out Georgia's 2003 agreement to set aside a large portion of Lake Lanier to supply drinking water to metro Atlanta.

April 16, 2008 — Alapaha Judicial Circuit Chief Judge Brooks E. Blitch, the target of both a Judicial Qualifications Commission misconduct proceeding and a separate FBI investigation, agrees to leave the bench and never again seek or assume judicial office. In the coming 30 months, at least 21 Georgia judges will be disciplined publicly by the JQC or step down from the bench amid allegations of unethical conduct.

Nov. 10, 2008 — Brian Nichols is found guilty of all 54 charges brought against him. In December, the sentencing jury deadlocks on the death penalty and Judge James G. Bodiford then sentences Nichols to the maximum time on each charge, ensuring he will spend his life in prison.

Dec.19, 2008 — The trial of courthouse shooter Brian Nichols is named the Daily Report's Newsmaker of the Year. The case leaves a legacy of shattered lives, proposed changes in death penalty jury laws and a weakened public defender system. Pictured: A Fulton County Courthouse visitor pauses in front of a memorial that honors the victims of the March 11, 2005 slayings.

June 5, 2009 — A potential constitutional showdown is averted when Gov. Sonny Perdue and Supreme Court Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears reach an agreement on cutting the judicial branch's budget. Perdue had said that all state agencies, as well as the legislative and judicial branches, would receive 25 percent less money in June because of a $274 million revenue shortfall. The judiciary balked, saying it would be unconstitutional for the governor to order the judicial branch to cut its budget. In the deal, Sears says the judicial branch will voluntarily cut its June budget by 25 percent, rather than being ordered to do so by the governor.

June 15, 2009 — The Georgia Supreme Court orders Expedia Inc. and its Hotwire.com subsidiary to collect and pay hotel occupancy taxes to the city of Columbus in a possible precedent for cities across the country.

July 17, 2009 — A federal judge rules that Atlanta must stop withdrawing water from Lake Lanier within three years unless it can get approval from Congress. U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson says Lake Lanier wasn't built for water supply and that the state's withdrawals are illegal.

Sept. 11, 2009 — Federal prosecutors in Macon end a four-year investigation of judicial corruption in South Georgia's Alapaha Circuit by allowing their target, former Chief Judge Brooks E. Blitch, to plead guilty to a single count of conspiring to defraud his constituents of honest services. The 74-year-old former Superior Court judge could have received up to 20 years in prison under the original 78-page indictment but under the plea agreement will serve only probation and pay an unspecified fine. An incensed U.S. District Court Senior Judge Hugh Lawson takes a 15-minute recess before agreeing to accept the plea and asks prosecutors sharp questions about why they were abandoning a case the government had pursued relentlessly.

Dec. 1, 2009 — Holland & Knight partner and former state Sen. Kasim Reed is elected mayor by a margin of fewer than 1,000 votes over City Councilwoman Mary Norwood. A Dec. 9 recount confirms Reed is the winner by a margin of 714 votes.

March 22, 2010 — By a 7-0 vote, the Supreme Court of Georgia strikes down the state's caps on pain and suffering damages in medical malpractice cases. "The very existence of the caps, in any amount, is violative of the right to trial by jury," Chief Justice Carol W. Hunstein writes for the court. The decision in Atlanta Oculoplastic Surgery v. Nestlehutt is the climax of litigation over changes in tort laws that favored defendants.

April 23, 2010 — Judge Paschal A. English of the Griffin Circuit abruptly resigns. An investigation by the district attorney and chief public defender reveals that the judge and a public defender assigned to his courtroom had an affair, but the DA and chief PD say the relationship did not compromise any of 225 cases she argued before the judge.

May 2010 — Georgia's Judicial Qualifications Commission Executive Director Cheryl F. Custer resigns after 11 years in the post, citing the commission's growing caseload and expanding duties that made fulfilling obligations to both her family and the JQC "difficult if not impossible." In July, the commission selects Madison lawyer Jeffrey R. Davis (pictured) to the post. His appointment comes at a time when the state's constitutionally mandated judicial disciplinary agency has absorbed budget cuts that have left it with barely enough money to open its doors and few funds to investigate complaints about the state's judges or to pay for the hearings required to remove judges accused of violating the state's canon of judicial ethics.

Sept. 21, 2010 — Two young men file a lawsuit in DeKalb State Court accusing Eddie Long, prominent pastor of a 25,000-member megachurch in Atlanta, of coercion into a sexual relationship. A third man files suit the following day.

Oct. 1, 2010 — Senior Judge Jack T. Camp, who has served on the U.S. District Court since 1988, is arrested on federal drug and gun charges stemming from an alleged series of liaisons with an exotic dancer and prostitute. The dancer is an FBI informant. In November he will plead guilty to a federal drug felony and two misdemeanors. In December, U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates says that her office will not object to any motions for new sentences that could be brought by 16 defendants sentenced by Camp during the time he was under investigation. She says that witnesses close to his drug case say Camp may have been biased against black defendants or impaired by drug use.

Nov. 2, 2010 — Republican Sam Olens is elected attorney general, defeating Democrat Ken Hodges and Libertarian Don Smart. Olens will replace Thurbert Baker, who served from 1997 until 2010; Baker lost a bid for the Democratic nomination for governor.

March 11, 2011 - A visiting federal judge from Washington sentences former U.S. District Senior Judge Jack T. Camp to 30 days in prison and 10 weeks of community service on drug and theft charges. In a surprising move, U.S. District Senior Judge Thomas F. Hogan reduces the sole drug felony to which Camp had pleaded guilty in the fall of 2010 to a misdemeanor. Camp's defense team—in what federal prosecutors claimed was a breach of Camp's plea deal last year—had raised legal issues while seeking probation for Camp that led to Hogan's action.

April 25, 2011 - King & Spalding announces that contrary to the understanding of Republican congressman, the firm will not represent the U.S. House of Representatives in defending the Defense of Marriage Act from a constitutional challenge. K&S Chairman Robert Hays says the firm's vetting process for the engagement was inadequate. The decision prompts K&S partner Paul Clement, the former U.S. solicitor general, to resign from the firm and publicly release a letter to Hays. "I would have never undertaken this matter unless I believed I had the full backing of the firm. … When it comes to lawyers, the surest way to be on the wrong side of history is to abandon a client in the face of hostile criticism," Clement writes. Later, Wick Sollers, K&S' Washington office managing partner tells the Daily Report that he accepts responsibility for the "unfortunate misunderstanding" and "breakdown in communications" that led Clement to contract with the House for the case.

June 28, 2011 - A panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals holds that Buford Dam can be operated to supply the Atlanta area with drinking water from Lake Lanier. With that holding, the appeals panel reversed a district court judge's 2009 order that effectively would have deprived 3 million people in the Atlanta region of their source of water. The states of Alabama and Florida appeal the 11th Circuit's ruling.

July 13, 2011 - A state Court of Appeals panel affirmed the dismissal of libel claims against The Atlanta Journal-Constitution brought by the estate of Richard Jewell. Dow Lohnes' Peter C. Canfield, the paper's longtime lawyer on the case, said, "We're pleased that the court recognized that this reporting was not actionable, and, as the trial court held, this case should have been over a long time ago."

August 12, 2011 - The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gives a partial victory to challengers of the 2010 federal health care overhaul, finding unconstitutional the part of the law that requires individuals to obtain health insurance but upholding the rest of the statute. The ruling evens the score in the federal appeals courts' consideration of the health care statute. The 6th Circuit, the only other circuit to have ruled on the law to date, rejected the challenge to the individual mandate in July. Former King & Spalding partner Paul Clement represented the challengers at the 11th Circuit. Later in the year, the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to review the 11th Circuit's ruling.

September 21, 2011 - The state of Georgia executes Troy Davis for the 1989 murder of Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail. The execution was delayed several hours by a last-minute stay issued—then lifted—by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Associated Press reports that Davis said while strapped to the gurney, "I am innocent. The incident that happened that night is not my fault. I did not have a gun." Attorney General Sam Olens says later, "Justice has been served for Officer Mark MacPhail and his family."

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