A judge and three Georgia politicians have injected themselves into the case of a former Gainesville insurance salesman who was sentenced in 2006 for drug trafficking and then released from prison early because of a paperwork snafu.
The case involving Charles Steven Stringer, 47, is full of twists and turns and is extraordinary because of the interest shown by influential North Georgia figures on his behalf. The district attorney in Forsyth County, where a judge will decide whether Stringer should return to prison, says that raises ethical concerns.
“This just smacks of a some backroom political deal — with politicking and lobbying,” Forsyth District Attorney Penny Penn said.
Stringer received two separate sentences in 2006: a 12-year prison term in Forsyth County and a three-year term in Lumpkin County. Both cases stemmed from his arrest with a bag of methamphetamine, a loaded handgun and digital scales. At his trial in Forsyth, Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Bagley said Stringer had ruined lives by dealing meth.
Stringer served two years of the Lumpkin sentence and was paroled. The paperwork for his lengthier Forsyth sentence never made it to the Georgia Department of Corrections, so he was released. Out of prison for almost two years, off drugs and working, according to friends and family, Stringer went to reapply for an insurance license earlier this year. He was arrested after a background check showed he had not served the Forsyth sentence.
Penn said Stringer was convicted and sentenced to a prison term he should fully serve.
On March 2, he appeared once again before Bagley. That’s when the judge in open court talked about people who had contacted him on Stringer’s behalf.
Those contacts put Bagley in an uncomfortable situation. The Georgia Code of Judicial Conduct says judges should not consider or initiate private conversations about a case unless all parties are involved. In Stringer’s case, this would have required his attorneys and the DA’s office to be present when people contacted Bagley on Stringer’s behalf.
Bagley said Lumpkin County Superior Court Judge Lynn Alderman visited his chambers in February to tell him Stringer was doing well in the community. He said she also dropped the names of a number of politicians, including state Rep. Carl Rogers, R-Gainesville.
Rogers called about a week later, Bagley said, to tell him Stringer had turned his life around. The judge said Rogers urged him to take that into consideration. Bagley said he told Rogers he needed to come to court if he wanted to talk on Stringer’s behalf.
Bagley said he found the communications “quite disturbing.”
Stringer, in a brief telephone interview, said “I don’t know anything about” Alderman going to bat for him with Bagley and declined to comment further.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has learned that, also in February, two other politicians — state Sens. Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, and Butch Miller, R-Gainesville — visited Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens to discuss Stringer’s case.
When Olens learned the case involved a convicted felon, he suggested Stringer consult a private attorney and told Gooch and Miller it would be a conflict of interest for him to discuss the matter, ending the meeting, a spokeswoman said.
Though as a felon he cannot vote, Stringer donated $3,000 to a number of political candidates last year, including $500 to Rogers’ campaign in October. His father, Paul Stringer, whose family has run a North Georgia insurance agency for decades, donated $500 last year to both Rogers’ and Gooch’s campaigns.
Paul Stringer said his son has turned his life around but declined to comment on the case.
Rogers, a Gainesville insurance agent elected to the Legislature in 1994, said he has known the Stringer family for years and had been helping Stringer seek to regain his insurance license. Stringer knew the Forsyth case was still hanging over him, Rogers said, noting he warned Stringer it could cause problems.
Rogers said his phone call to Bagley was “a courtesy call,” adding “I had no clue” it was improper for Bagley to have such a conversation.
Rogers said he neither solicited the campaign contributions from Stringer and Stringer’s father, nor let them influence him to get involved in the case.
Alderman said in an interview she did not meet with Bagley to advocate for keeping Stringer out of prison. She said she told Bagley only that Stringer had told her his probation officers thought he was doing well.
Alderman said Gooch, the state senator from Dahlonega, first contacted her about the unusual case. She said she then asked Stringer, whom she knows because her son goes to school with his daughter, to explain what happened. Stringer later gave her his sentencing papers from his cases in Forsyth and Lumpkin, which Alderman said she passed on to Bagley.
“That was my function — to alert Judge Bagley about the situation,” Alderman said.
Penn, the Forsyth district attorney, contends Alderman “should not have been involved at all. That’s just basic judicial ethics.”
The two state senators, Gooch and Miller, said they have known Stringer for years and went to Olens for advice, not to influence him.
“We didn’t ask him to do anything special,” Gooch said. “I went and said, as a friend, ‘What can we do?’”
After Stringer was released from prison, he went back to work and involved himself in family life, Miller said. He said he chose to help because Stringer is a good example of a criminal who reformed.
Gooch agreed, saying it is the fault of the court system that Stringer’s paperwork was lost and that he may now have to return to prison. Gooch said the Stringer family’s wealth and his father’s donation to his campaign had nothing to do with his attempts to help.
Stringer was first arrested Jan. 25, 2005, during a traffic stop. Inside Stringer’s truck, a deputy found a loaded pistol, two rifles and a bag containing two glass meth pipes and the digital scales, commonly used to measure amounts in drug sales. Two ounces of methamphetamine were found in Stringer’s coat pocket. Despite the evidence, Stringer fought the charges at trial.
When he stood before Bagley prior to sentencing, Stringer apologized for his addiction but insisted he did not deal meth.
Bagley noted that the jury found otherwise. “So instead of saying I’m sorry to me, you should be saying I’m sorry to all those families who you destroy by selling drugs to their children, to their fathers, to their mothers,” he said.
Four days later, Stringer pleaded guilty in Lumpkin to possession with the intent to distribute meth and received the three-year sentence.
Stringer was paroled June 30, 2008. Bagley has scheduled a hearing Wednesday to determine whether Stringer should return to prison for the Forsyth term.
Staff writer Christopher Quinn contributed to this article.
About the Author
