DA: Too many murder suspects get bond

By ANDRIA SIMMONS

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Fulton County’s district attorney wants to know why so many indicted murder suspects are out on bond, in light of last week’s escape of a murder suspect on house arrest with an ankle monitor.

On Tuesday, Georgia House Arrest lost its business with the county after 17-year-old Antoine Wimes cut off his monitor Aug. 17, left his Fairburn home and allegedly shot a woman in the face and beat her son. Fulton authorities were notified 13 hours too late — not by the monitoring company but by the suspect’s family.

Employees from Georgia House Arrest declined to comment publicly.

But problems in the electronic ankle-monitoring business are not limited to one company and have caught the public’s attention even as the state has cleared the way to place more defendants under electronic pretrial release.

In Fulton, monitoring services are approved by the county’s Pretrial Services office, which is managed by Superior Court, said Tracy Flanagan, spokeswoman for sheriff’s department.

But District Attorney Paul Howard said cutting the company from a list of providers doesn’t go far enough. He wants to determine why indicted murder defendants in Fulton County are being released on bond and why non-elected magistrate judges have been the ones granting bond. Howard said 43 indicted murder defendants are out on bond.

He has asked county manager Zachary Williams to evaluate the Wimes case.

Fulton County magistrate Judge Karen Woodson granted Wimes $250,000 bond in March, even though the District Attorney’s Office and Pretrial Services officers opposed it. Wimes was charged with murder in the July 2008 shooting death of a convenience store clerk.

As a condition of his release, he was required to wear an ankle monitor and remain on 24-hour curfew at his mother’s home.

The judge would have considered Wimes’ juvenile court history, family support system and other factors in making her decision, said Judy Cramer, Superior Court administrator.

Wimes’ short-lived escape is one of several recent problems with ankle monitoring programs.

In April, former DeKalb Sheriff’s deputy Derrick Yancey escaped from house arrest about a month after he was charged in the shooting deaths of his wife and a day laborer.

Two private firms charged with monitoring him were delayed four hours in notifying DeKalb court officials. It took another 10 hours for court officials to notify the sheriff’s office.

Another high-profile defendant, Aimee Michael, accused of fleeing the scene of an Easter Sunday wreck that killed five people in Fulton County, also has been suspected of skipping out on her house arrest. Georgia House Arrest was the company assigned to monitor her.

Ankle monitors are supposed to provide an extra layer of security for defendants who are out on bond awaiting trial. Proponents say the option helps free up bed space in overcrowded county jails and saves millions for local governments.

In Fulton County, only 36 of 1,200 defendants in the Pretrial Services program are under electronic monitoring, said Don Plummer, spokesman for Fulton County Superior Court. Other metro counties also have defendants awaiting trial on bond with ankle monitors.

Gwinnett County Magistrate Judge George Hutchinson said he didn’t know how many, but “in my experience, the use of electronic monitoring as a condition of bond is done very rarely.”

In April, Cobb County dropped Georgia House Arrest from its list of providers after learning defendants weren’t being monitored on weekends or weeknights, said the county’s Chief Magistrate Judge Frank Cox.

Ankle monitors are used to track 48 of the state’s 17,000 registered convicted sex offenders who have been declared “sexually dangerous predators.” A monitor looks like a black plastic box, about the size of a deck of cards, attached to a 1-inch-wide plastic strap.

The devices use a global positioning system to track defendants and relay information on their whereabouts via cellphone to a monitoring company. A fiber-optic cable embedded in the strap gives off a signal when it has been tampered with or cut, said Robbie Brewer, whose company, Atlanta Ankle Monitoring, is another service provider for Fulton County.

Ankle monitors are “just a tool, not a guarantee,” Brewer said. They are designed to be easily cut off in case of emergency, he added. The device also cannot send out a signal if it’s out of cellphone range or has not been charged.

“You are still relying on [the defendant’s] faithfulness to charge it, to do what they are supposed to do and not to cut it,” Brewer said.

Soon, more criminal defendants in Georgia could be released from jail with ankle monitors. A new state law that took effect July 1 created standards for an electronic pretrial release program as a way to assist with local jail overcrowding. The bill’s sponsor, Len Walker (R-Loganville), said the law requires electronic monitoring companies act as surety for the bond.

That means the companies are responsible for sending agents to find any defendant who goes missing under their watch. He said it’s up to sheriff’s departments and county courts to work together to make sure authorized providers are effectively monitoring defendants.

Staff writers Mike Morris and Marcus Garner contributed to this article.