Georgia Attorney News Archive

A jury has exonerated Amanda Davis, a retired anchor of FOX 5, from charges of driving under the influence and reckless driving.

Instead, she was held liable for not being able to maintain driving on one lane which resulted to an accident in 2012.

For her sentence, Davis will be serving the community for 20 hours.

She will also be made to pay $200 as fine.

Defending for Davis was Atlanta DUI lawyer William "Bubba" Head.

Willie C. Jones will be spending the rest of his life in jail with no chance of parole after the jury convicted him for the death of his daughter.

Before her death, four-year-old Tyasia Phillips, who incurred a head wound, had been connected to a life support after she was severely beaten and burned by the man whom she called dad.

Jones had alleged that his daughter had injured her head when she tried to escape from him.

Augusta attorney Katrell Nash, defending for Jones, appealed to the jury to consider the likelihood that the little girl had gotten the head wound while playing with other kids.

At first, Jones had denied hurting his daughter but later admitted to the crime saying that he had beaten her for her insolence.

At 18 years old, De'Marquise Elkins will have to live the rest of his life being imprisoned without parole for shooting a baby boy to death.

Elkins was found guilty by a jury and a little more than a week later he was meted with life imprisonment which disappointed his defense attorney in Brunswick, Kevin Gough.

Gough said that the sentence was cruel and uncommon given that his client is a juvenile.

Gough added that his young client has had a hard time growing up as his mother was drug dependent and often neglected his care.

Elkins had killed the baby, who was strapped in his stroller, when he was still 17 years old, while he was attempting to rob the infant's mother.

Gough said he will be appealing both the conviction and the life with no parole sentence.

Mark Gary, a developer in Gwinnett County convicted for bribery, got a reprieve for his cooperation in an ongoing federal probe of alleged corruption in Gwinnett.

Instead of getting to spend more than four years in federal prison, Gary was meted with just two years plus three years under probation.

Gary was convicted for bribing Shirley Lasseter, the former commissioner of Gwinnett County, to vote for his proposal of a station for waste transfer costing $4 million.

Doug Gilfillan, the assistant United States attorney, said he agreed to reducing the sentence as Gary's cooperation, which included secretly recording his conversations with elected officials, could lead to the indictment of another person involved in the alleged corruption.

However, Atlanta defense attorney Paul Kish representing Gary, said that he and his client are disappointed with the sentence.

According to Kish, Gary deserved more because his cooperation was extensive.

But the judge did not buy Gary's claim that he was a victim of what he alleges as a corrupt system in Gwinnett.

It is not known when the trial of DeKalb County CEO Burrell Ellis will begin after Courtney L. Johnson, a Superior Court Judge, approved the defense's request for a delay.

Ellis was supposed to stand trial for corruption starting August 19.

The defense lawyers' request did not include a date for the trial to begin.

Jill Polster, Atlanta criminal defense attorney, said the delay will be for the best interest of the residents of DeKalb County.

She added that no one wants to have a trial twice which is what happens when the first trial ends in a conviction and an appeal is filed because it was rushed.