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Byline: Bill Rankin and Tamar Hallerman bill.rankin@ajc.com, Tamar. In just her first term as Fulton Countys district attorney, Fani Willis brought two sensational racketeering cases that, for better or worse, [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin, Tamar Hallerman and David Wickert bill.rankin@ajc.com, Tamar.Hallerman@ajc.com dwickert@ajc.com Special prosecutor Nathan Wade resigned from the Fulton County election interference case on Friday afternoon, hours after a judge [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin TOP LOCAL STORY TRUMP INDICTMENT IN GEORGIA& A Fulton County judge has set Sept. 8 as the possible release date of the final report of the special [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin GWINNETT COUNTY A Gwinnett County man who has spent two decades in prison for a crime he insists he did not commit has turned down the chance [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin COBB COUNTY The Cobb County District Attorneys Office wont retry Ross Harris for murder in the tragic case in which he left his 22-month-old son, Cooper, to [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin MARIETTA A disbarred Marietta lawyer has been sentenced to almost six years in federal prison for stealing the identities of his clients to secure more than $400,000 [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin GEORGIA SUPREME COURT Gov. Brian Kemp has announced he will appoint Judge Andrew Pinson to the Georgia Supreme Court when Chief Justice David Nahmias steps down in [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin GEORGIA SUPREME COURT Chief Justice David Nahmias has informed Gov. Brian Kemp he will resign from the Georgia Supreme Court on July 17, the last day of [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin CONTINUING COVERAGE COURTS Georgias chief justice on Tuesday asked for support and patience as the states judiciary struggles to climb out from under a mountainous backlog of [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin JUDICIARY An Athens judge should publicly apologize to a bail bondsman for detaining him in courthouse chambers and berating him for posts on social media, the states [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin CRAWFORD COUNTY A Crawford County judge will be suspended 30 days without pay for having a physical altercation with a shackled defendant in a courthouse hallway, the [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin EXCLUSIVE COURTS Federal authorities are conducting a criminal investigation of suspended state Court of Appeals Judge Christian Coomer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has learned. The AJC learned of [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin ATLANTA The federal appeals court in Atlanta has found it was unconstitutional for the Butts County sheriff to place warning signs in the yards of registered sex [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin COURTS The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to forward two of President Joe Bidens nominees to become judges on the federal court in Atlanta. The votes [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin MURDER CONVICTION The jury in the Claude Tex McIver case was improperly denied the right to decide whether the former Atlanta lawyer committed a misdemeanor when he [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin HOT-CAR DEATH Justin Ross Harris deserves a new trial in the hot-car murder case involving his son because an avalanche of evidence of his carnal behavior was [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin FEDERAL JUDGE Bill Pryor, chief judge of the federal appeals court in Atlanta, has been cleared of allegations of wrongdoing in that he hired a law clerk [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin JUDICIAL CONDUCT A state panel has rejected Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Christian Coomers bid to get ethics charges against him dismissed. The recent decision clears the [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin PUBLIC SAFETY Probate judges must approve weapons carry licenses even when they have incomplete information about an applicants criminal history, the Georgia Supreme Court has ruled. In [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin GEORGIA SUPREME COURT The age-old practice used by property owners to boot unauthorized vehicles on their premises was dealt a serious blow Tuesday by the states highest [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin AHMAUD ARBERY CASE Federal prosecutors and defense lawyers representing three men facing federal hate crimes charges for the killing of Ahmaud Arbery want to greatly expand the [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin TELECOMMUNICATIONS LAWSUIT The countrys largest provider of telecommunications services to jails and prisons has agreed to end contentious litigation over non-refunded deposits made by its customers. Global [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin EXCLUSIVE COURTS Finding prosecutors withheld critical evidence, a judge has thrown out the conviction of a man imprisoned for 23 years for a South Georgia murder he [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin A laborious jury selection process ended Wednesday with a panel of 12 jurors and four alternates. It consisted of four men and 12 women. One is Black, [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin and Shaddi Abusaid LOCAL IN-DEPTH AHMAUD ARBERY TRIAL Almost 20 months to the day Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed, the trial for the three men charged [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin CONTINUING COVERAGE AHMAUD ARBERY TRIAL Defense attorneys for two men charged with killing Ahmaud Arbery are asking a judge to let jurors know Arbery was on probation [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin CONTINUING COVERAGE GEORGIA COAST On the weekend of the Georgia-Florida football game, St. Simons Islands East Beach becomes Frat Beach, an openair party teeming with thousands of [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin AT THE GOLD DOME REVENUE DEPARTMENT A division of the Department of Revenue unlawfully held onto millions of dollars in seized funds and a high-ranking agent misled [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin Jury selection in a death penalty trial in South Georgia will resume today after it was halted last week when a defense lawyer thought he may have [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin DIGGING DEEPER LEGAL SYSTEM Jury selection in Donnie Rowes death penalty trial in South Georgia was halted Thursday when a defense attorneys at-home test for COVID-19 turned [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin TOP STATE STORY LEGAL SYSTEM The district attorney headquartered in Columbus on Tuesday became the third sitting or former top prosecutor in Georgia to be indicted this [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin ARBERY TRIAL A mobile morgue outside Brunswicks hospital houses the overflow of the dead. National Guard troops take up the slack for an overwhelmed medical staff. The [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin CONTINUING COVERAGE AHMAUD ARBERY CASE It took 72 days before arrests were made for the Feb. 23, 2020, killing of Ahmaud Arbery. During a virtual news conference [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin CONTINUING COVERAGE AHMAUD ARBERY CASE& Defense attorneys representing the three men charged with killing Ahmaud Arbery cannot present evidence at trial of Arberys past run-ins with the [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin COUNTY BY COUNTY CHEROKEE& Roger Garrison, the former sheriff of Cherokee County, resigned this week from the state judicial watchdog agency after a decades-old photo of him [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin DEKALB COUNTY Finding evidence of unlawful deadly force, the federal appeals court in Atlanta has declined to dismiss a wrongful death lawsuit filed against a DeKalb County [...]

Byline: Bill Rankin The ongoing surge of COVID-19 cases across South Georgia temporarily shut down two courthouses, suspended jury trials in three more counties and prompted an unsuccessful request to [...]