Fulton County Family Violence Task Force Meeting Minutes February 18, 2015

Fulton County Family Violence Task Force Meeting Minutes
February 18, 2015

New task force attendees:
Lori Anderson – Atlanta Legal Aid
Tracy Oliver – Fulton County intern
Chuck Olson – General Counsel Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council

Old business: minutes were emailed around from November 2014 meeting. Motion approved to enter November meeting minutes.

Moment of silence for LaToya Andrews and her children who were shot in Douglas County.

Guest Speaker Chuck Olson – probation change – last year in Superior Court in August, lawsuit by people on probation being supervised by a private probation agency. Gist: if you stopped sending in your money or showing up, they would simply toll your sentence, get a bench warrant, and wait for you to get picked up on some other criminal charge. Many years later, stopped for traffic violation and taken to jail for outstanding warrant. Private supervision company still charging for probation services in the interim. Superior Court of Richmond County says statute allows for tolling of probation if someone stops serving their sentence. But following authorization of private probation services, discovered that nothing in the statute applies to misdemeanor sentences. Therefore, all tolled sentences were improper. Case went to SCOGA in November of 2014. That part of the decision was affirmed. As a result, large number of misdemeanor courts voided all existing warrants and orders. While this case was pending, the General Assembly tried to fix it. Unfortunately, private probation services were “the fixers.” They tried to exempt themselves from Open Records Act. A lot of courts just said all these people who skipped out on probation are just free to go. Two courts – Clayton & Douglas – chief judges had read the Centennial Services case, and noticed a footnote re: tolling – “we decide only that no provision of the code relied upon in this case authorized the tolling of misdemeanor probation services. We have no occasion to consider whether such tolling might be permissible as a matter of common law, and if so whether the common law has been abrogated by legislation. Neither briefed nor decided.” Clayton & Douglas chief judges have said there may be a provision available for tolling. Chuck: no such thing as probation at common law. Common law said if you abscond on your sentence, you still owe the sentence. Clayton & Douglas judges found case law from late 1800s and early 1900s and found that suspended probationary sentences didn’t exist until early 1900s. People then would abscond on sentence. If they were ever caught, they came back and had to serve their time. So at common law, courts allowed to toll sentence from time court learns you fled until you came back to Georgia. So Clayton & Douglas say those warrants are still good. The Clayton case granted an immediate certificate of review, likely to go up on appeal.

HB310 (victims’ advocates in favor of HB310) is also in progress to address the tolling issue. News: merges supervision of parolees, probationers, and some (but not all – only Class A & B serious/violent) juvenile violations. Will be supervised by a new agency: Dept of Community Supervision. This agency will have supervisory authority over county misdemeanor probation. Specifically allows for the tolling of probated sentences if the probationer fails to appear in court or fails to report to probation officer. In order to get the tolling, probation officer has to file an affidavit with the court stating certain minimum requirements. Tolling begins when court enters an order. Tolling orders cannot be entered nunc pro tunc. At the time probation is revoked as result of fleeing, if they revoke ENTIRETY of remaining probation, it will wipe out any outstanding fines, fees, or restitution (but not other special conditions).

Impact on victims (Amanda): when probation is revoked, no FVIP requirement, no restraining conditions. Whole sentence may go away bc it sits for too long for tolling, time is running, once they are arrested on warrant, there may not be enough time for them to complete FVIP, and victim has no protection.

Terry Parks: If HB310 passes, what happens to all the dismissed warrants/probation sentences? Nothing, can’t undo it. Would only apply to probation sentences entered after July 1, 2015. Offenders already know about this.

Lavon - Can we put this on our website in layman’s terms? Bri can put a link up to an article that explains the tolling issue, but there isn’t one we know of that explains the impact on victims. We can add a blurb explaining why victim’s advocates are for HB310. (This is only misdemeanors, not felonies).

One practical workaround is that judges are right now issuing consecutive probationary sentences rather than concurrent so that if they abscond, there is still time to require the defendant to complete their probationary requirements.

Provision that allows offender to sign an agreement for LONGER than the statutory sentence (in accountability courts). So their sentence doesn’t even BEGIN until they violate it. (ex: DUI courts, drug courts)

Lavon Morris-Grant – outreach committee. Worked with Bri to start up website and facebook. Can download all minutes, programs. Website looks great, facebook page matches website in terms of branding. General updates about DV, not just the task force or Fulton County. Looking into faith-based communities to distribute materials to share with their members and communities of different resources available in Fulton County. Want to make a connection with all religious communities to educate about DV, and how can they help us identify issues that we may not even know about. Goal is to hit 30-50 churches, etc in Fulton County. Step One: getting a list of churches/mosques/synagogues. Seminaries might be a good starting point too.

Victims’ Rights Week in April. It’s also sexual assault month. Try to coordinate a task force resources fair. Get member programs and info with a table. Need volunteers to man the table. No location yet. Lavon will get that info soon to get volunteers. We may do more than once during the month.

Amanda: we have materials geared toward the faith-based community. Lavon will contact Victoria to help us put together something from the task force.

Our website: FultonFVTaskForce.com

Facebook.com/fultoncountyFVtaskforce

Terry Parks – FVIP January meeting update: 100% participation. Discussed how to make what they do a little more cohesive. Developed a form to keep track of who is coming in and where they’re coming from. Addresses constant complaint that people don’t have paperwork. They have to have a form to give to the FVIP provider so they can keep it in a file and verify participation. Superior Court wanted all the FVIP providers to list their fees on a form. There was some discussion about where or not to do this, but the FVIP lists had already been updated with fees and distribution to participants had begun.

Elections -

Starting in May:
New co-chairs: Lori Anderson & Amanda Planchard
Secretary: Samantha Macedo
Fatality Review Chair: Wendy Lipshutz
FVIP Chair: David Tillis

Strangulation cards: distributed to APD and Fulton PD.

For next meeting: let’s update our directory. Next meeting is May 20th.

Families First will put out a poster for all FVIP providers on their website.