Fresh Loaf

Errin Vuley, a longtime activist for women’s causes, was killed Tuesday morning in a multi-car crash in DeKalb County.

Vuley, 35, had been a familiar face at the State Capitol for several years, working for the Feminist Women’s Health Center and GARAL, the pre-cursor to Georgia NARAL Pro-Choice America, before serving as executive director for Georgians for Choice from 2001-2006.

Most recently, Vuley had been interim CEO for GOAL — A Girl’s Journey of Growth, a Decatur-based non-profit that helps adolescent girls build self-esteem.

According to the AJC, Vuley was killed when her mini-van was struck by a Ford Explorer on Memorial Drive. Police were looking for another vehicle they believe caused the crash.

“Errin was one of the most passionate, dedicated people I know, deeply committed to social justice,” said Sara Totonchi, a lobbyist with the Southern Center for Human Rights who was close friends with Vuley.

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Wendy Whitaker, the Harlem, Ga., housewife who was the subject of a 2006 CL cover story about Georgia’s then-new — and constitutionally shaky — sex offender law, has been arrested for failing to register a new address.

Whitaker is the lead plaintiff in a three-year-old lawsuit challenging the law by the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights.

In 1997, when she was 17, Whitaker was convicted under Georgia’s antiquated sodomy law — overturned the next year by the U.S. Supreme Court — for performing oral sex on a 15-year-old classmate. She was sentenced to five years probation and has had to register annually as a sex offender ever since.

At the time the suit was filed, Whitaker had been forced to move from her new house because it was too close to a church day-care. The law’s residency requirement prohibits registered sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school, playground or other place where children congregate.

Since then, several provisions of the law have been struck down or enjoined, including measures that criminalized homelessness among sex offenders; forced sex offenders to leave homes they’d bought before the law was passed; and prohibited sex offenders from volunteering at church. The bulk of the draconian law — authored by state Rep. Jerry Keen, R-St. Simons — remains in force as the lawsuit languishes in federal court.

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Whitaker, the subject of a cover story I wrote in July 2006 concerning the impact of Georgia’s harsh new sex-offender law, has been given notice by the Columbia County sheriff’s office that she’ll be removed from her house on Thanksgiving Day.

Lawyers for the Southern Center for Human Rights, which represents Whitaker’s constitutional challenge against the law, have filed for a Superior Court injunction to block her eviction. But they may be fighting an uphill battle; last week, a federal judge declined to grant a similar injunction.

Loyal readers will recall that Whitaker – who must register as a sex offender as a result of a consensual sex act when she was a teenager – was first ordered from her house in Harlem, Ga., two years ago when the home was discovered to be within 1,000 feet of a church-based child-care facility.

“Forcing Wendy Whitaker from her home is both pointless and cruel,” said Sarah Geraghty, Whitaker’s attorney. “Ms. Whitaker has never posed a threat to anyone and she does not belong on the sex offender registry.”

Why doesn’t she belong? The SCHR explains:

Wendy Whitaker’s offense happened 12 years ago, just after she had turned 17. The other student was three weeks short of his 16th birthday and they were both sophomores in high school. For this single act of consensual oral sex, Ms. Whitaker was arrested and charged with the crime of sodomy.

If Ms. Whitaker had committed the same act that led to her conviction today, she would not have to register as a sex offender at all. Because it occurred in 1996, she must register as a sex offender for life, have her picture posted on the GBI website and comply with all sex-offender residence restrictions and other conditions that treat her as if she was a predator.

As we say in the news business, that’s F’ed up!

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The Georgia Supreme Court today ruled against a Henry County man who argued that he should not have been required to register as a sex offender because Georgia law is too vague. As a result, James Orin Jenkins will spend the next three years in prison.

Jenkins is not a party to the constitutional challenge to the sex-offender law brought by the Southern Center for Human Rights that’s now working its way through federal courts. Instead, he’s one of several Georgia sex offenders who’ve appealed a conviction for non-registration imposed by the state’s draconian new law.

Just last month, the High Court struck a provision in the law that would have sent homeless sex offenders to prison for being unable to register a valid address with their county sheriff’s office. The plaintiff in that suit, William James Santos, had spent a year in a Hall County jail and was facing a life sentence for failing to register his address – even though he didn’t have an address.

As far as I can tell, Jenkins’ appeal was based on much narrower technical grounds, some of which hinged on whether his conviction on charges of attempted rape qualified as a “sexually violent offense.”

Anyway, it seems today’s ruling will have little impact on the Southern Center’s lawsuit. Watch this week’s paper for my update on the latest news from that case and also look here.

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If the name in the headline sounds familiar, it’s because Whitaker was the subject of a cover story I wrote in July 2006 concerning the impact of Georgia’s harsh new sex-offender law. Whitaker, then 26, had been forced out of the house she owned with her husband in Harlem, Ga., on the outskirts of Augusta because the home was discovered to be within 1,000 feet of a church-based child-care facility.

For a while, the couple lived in a trailer park with relatives and she even moved briefly across the state line to South Carolina because the Georgia law bars sex offenders from residing near churches, schools, playgrounds, parks and other facilities, leaving her with few options for where to stay. The penalty for violating the law is 10-30 years behind bars.

Whitaker moved back into her house, however, after the Georgia Supreme Court struck down the law late last year, ruling the residency restrictions made it practically impossible for a sex offender to remain in his own home.

But the law was retooled this spring by the state Legislature and, in July, Columbia County deputies again told Whitaker she’d have to leave her house or face arrest.

Whitaker, who is the main plaintiff in an ongoing legal challenge of the law’s constitutionality, appeared again today before Federal District Court Judge Clarence Cooper. But this time, she left with even less hope.

Cooper ruled that lawyers for the Southern Center for Human Rights had failed to establish that the residency restrictions prohibiting Whitaker from occupying her home did not rise to the level of banishment from the county. Cooper didn’t explain his decision in depth, but it appeared he was swayed by an argument by lawyers for the Attorney General’s office that about 50 other sex offenders had managed to find some form of housing in Columbia County.

On the witness stand, Whitaker indicated that if she and her husband are forced to rent a place to live, in addition to paying their home mortgage, they’ll likely face foreclosure. “It will be bad for us,” she said.

Southern Center lawyers were also in court today to argue that the law imposes an unconstitutional ban on religious practices because many sex offenders have been barred from church activities. More on that later…

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Number of for-profit probation companies in Georgia that make money off people who can’t afford their misdemeanor court fines: 39

Number of people fined for misdemeanors who became clients of for-profit probation companies as soon as a 2000 law paved the way for the companies: 25,000

Amount of money that a former state official accepted from a for-profit probation company after he “strongly encouraged” the legislation: $75,000

Months in prison the official received for accepting the bribe: 6

Year that the Georgia Legislature passed a law allowing for-profit probation companies to keep their records secret: 2006

Minimum monthly payments that the for-profit-probation lobby unsuccessfully sought from misdemeanor probationers during last year’s legislative session: $50

Minimum monthly payments that felony probationers pay: $23

Amount that an Americus high school student was fined for violating his learner’s permit: $155

Amount he ended up paying after making monthly payments to a for-profit probation company: $505

Source: Profiting from the Poor: A report on predatory probation companies in Georgia, by the Southern Center for Human Rights

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Lawyers from the Southern Center for Human Rights will be in court Thursday morning arguing that cuts made by the state have gutted the system to provide public defenders to the indigent.

The Georgia Public Defender Standards Council, which was formed in 2003 to handle indigent defense all over the state, hasn’t been fully funded since Republicans took over the General Assembly in 2005. As CL pointed out in a cover story on the issue, the Republican leadership got a lot of hay out of criticizing the indigent defense system for budget over-runs that the legislature actually created by underfunding the agency in the first place.

Stephen Bright, president of the Southern Center, says the decision to fire 21 public defenders in Fulton County on July 31 will throw the system into chaos.

“We are in perpetual crisis because the funding is so inadequate – the state funding for indigent defense overall is only about 1/3 of what’s needed; for capital cases it’s less than half,” Bright says via email.
The issue was first raised because of the expense of the Brian Nichols murder case. Now it has shifted to the Metro Conflict Defender Office, which represents co-defendants when conflict-of-interest rules mandate that a public defender can represent only one person in a case.

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