Posted on 06/07/2005 12:33:58 PM PDT by GPBurdell
A really cold case: Fulton tries to prosecute dead man
By RHONDA COOK The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 06/07/05
Jason Warner was killed last fall, but that didn't stop Fulton County prosecutors from bringing drug charges against the Atlanta man this spring.
"Judge, I think he's dead," a probation officer said when Warner's marijuana possession case was called before Judge Alford Dempsey last week.
Dempsey shook his head and said, "I guess we're indicting the dead now."
The judge ordered the case "dead docketed," a legal status akin to being in permanent limbo.
Warner's mother, Virginia, said she was "shocked" to get a notice about a month ago for her deceased son to appear in court.
"I thought that was all done," Warner said Monday. Her son was killed in a shootout in November.
District Attorney Paul Howard's name was on the document spelling out the charge against Warner.
Asked about the case Monday, the district attorney's office was defensive.
"How would we have known he was dead?" said spokesman Erik Friedly. "If you write a story and say we indicted a dead man, it sounds crazy."
Friedly said the district attorney's office handles about 17,000 cases a year. "We just wouldn't necessarily know unless we had some particular reason to have contact with someone who had presented [that information] to us. We had no idea at the time he was dead," he said.
The drug case against Warner from 2003 was among a "large number of cases [that], for whatever reason, had been accumulating at the jail or the [Atlanta] Municipal Court. So we didn't get it until 2004. As a result of getting these large number of cases, those [cases] took longer than normal to get ? them formally charged."
On Nov. 14, 2003, Atlanta police had arrested Warner, 20, in northwest Atlanta on a charge of possession of marijuana with intent to distribute.
A year later, in November 2004, while he was out on bond, Warner was shot and killed by a homeowner as he and another man were breaking into a house in Grove Park. The killing was reported in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Yet Warner was formally charged by the district attorney's office in March, four months after he was killed, and a notice was mailed to his mother. In response, Virginia Warner sent a copy of her son's death certificate to a probation officer who had supervised him after a January 2004 conviction for hindering police in an unrelated case and giving a false statement.
Mike Mears, director of the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council, was critical of the district attorney's office actions in Warner's case.
"When you start indicting dead people, it would indicate to me the power is not being used prudently," Mears said. "That certainly indicates there's been a lack of attention to the people. - It's out of control."
Buzz
Buzz Blog
What assets does DeadGuy have to forfeit to the county?
Was he buried in a really fine casket, or what?
He's dead, Jim.......
Of course he's dead - he voted in Philadelphia AND Chicago.
I hope his crime was not a capital crime. Seems like putting a man to death would not have much detterent effect if he's already dead.
Give him something other than death.... Maybe life in jail? Or better yet, a steep fine.
Several years ago they did this to a navy guy named Bell. He got busted for DUI and a friend bailed him out. On the way back to the dock they went out of control and he ended several feet up a telephone pole. When his case came up I told the judge he was dead. The judge issued a warrant for his arrest. I said the hell with it. The day I left they still had the warrant on file.
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