Senior U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Alaimo – credited with turning around what was at one time the nation’s most dangerous and deadly prison – died Wednesday. He was 89.
The judge’s office in Brunswick confirmed that Alaimo died Wednesday morning at Southeast Georgia Health System's Brunswick hospital, where he had been admitted Sunday night for an undisclosed condition.
Alaimo was guided by his experience a prisoner in a German camp during World War II in many of his decisions, but especially in a 25-year-long lawsuit that focused on conditions at the Georgia State Prison at Reidsville.
After taking the 1972 suit, Alaimo found racial violence and almost routine stabbings, rats in the prison’s hallways, standing waste water in the cell blocks and sewer lines hooked into the drinking water. More than 3,000 inmates were crammed into a prison that should have held only 1,000.
"It was pretty sordid. I confess, I was shocked," he said.
Twenty-five years later and after taxpayers had spend more than $100 million to renovate the south Georgia prison, he closed the case, saying the state was then ready to operate a safe prison.
But also in the years since President Richard Nixon appointed him late in 1971, Alaimo presided over cases that changed the state’s system for electing judges, rescued farmers from foreclosure, sent Atlanta officials to prison for corruption and sentenced a 60-year-old cocaine kingpin to 357 years in prison.
Alaimo was one of two judges to file a complaint with the U.S. appeals court in Atlanta against a federal judge in Florida, Alcee Hasting, after Hastings was acquitted of bribery charges. Hastings was impeached and removed from the bench but Hastings was elected to Congress in 1992 and is now the South Florida representative is a senior Democratic whip in the U.S. House.
“He got deeply involved,” said Brunswick lawyer Jim Bishop, who was Alaimo’s law partner and friend.
Bishop said a mutual friend had said when he heard Alaimo had died, " ‘We’re losing too many of our heroes,’ and that’s true.”
Bishop said Alaimo was committed to doing “what’s right not just some of the time, but all the time. To me, he is the conscience of this community.”
As a World War II prisoner of war held in Germany, Alaimo knew what it was like to be caged.
"I cannot really describe to you the terrible feeling of claustrophobia which engulfed me when the gates of the camp closed behind me. The loss of liberty is one of the most serious injuries that can be inflicted upon an individual,” Alaimo said in a 2005 interview.
Alaimo, a B-26 bomber pilot, was the only member of the 11-person crew to survive a crash on a flight bombing a target in the Netherlands. He was thrown from the plane and "that gives you terrible feelings of the vagaries of luck -- they die and you survive," Alaimo said in that interview.
Alaimo was born in Termini Imerese Sicily, Italy, and immigrated to the United States with his parents. He studied at Ohio Northern University and then served in the Army Air Corps. After World War II, he attended Emory University’s law school, graduating in 1948.
In addition to the prison case, some of Alaimo’s cases included:
A 1982 case in which Alaimo said the federal Farmer’s Home Administration had illegally begun foreclosing on 5,600 Georgia farmers without giving them an opportunity to defer their loan payments. He stopped the foreclosures.
Sentenced Charles Fleming Sr. in 1984 to 357 years in prison and fined him $730,000 for cocaine smuggling.
Presided over the 1993 airport corruption trial of former Atlanta City Councilman Ira Jackson and airport businessman Dan Paradies . At the time, some argued that the trial was tainting the race for mayor between Bill Campbell and former Fulton Commission Chairman Michael Lomax.
His wife of 62 years, Jeanne, died last January.
“He was so devoted to her and they had a unique, romantic relationship,” Bishop said. “He missed her more than he thought he would.”
Bishop said Alaimo spent Christmas afternoon at his house, just two blocks away, and he seemed somewhat healthy. On Sunday night, he became ill and the doctor suggested he go to the hospital.
“He passed away this morning around 11 o’clock,” Bishop said.
