Fulton's revolving jailhouse door

Gregory Favors has a decade-long record of arrests and convictions but he had little fear from the Fulton County justice system until he was charged with murder this week.

Before he was charged Tuesday with killing a state trooper, Favors had been arrested three times this year alone after trying to flee police, court records show.

Each time, he obtained bond in Fulton County. Each time a pretrial services officer recommended against it, according to court records.

An overcrowded court docket and an overcrowded jail forces prosecutors to cut favorable deals and judges to allow for lenient bonds, stressing the system to the point that even career criminals such as Favors tagged as flight risks are allowed to leave jail on their signature without putting up any money, lawyers said.

"The fact that they recommended that he not be released is certainly a sign that people recognized he might be a flight risk but it doesn't mean the judge has to listen to them," said Greg Schwarz, a former prosecutor and now a defense lawyer. "A lot of times they'll recommend no release because of no address or flight risk and the judge looks at them and says, ‘I’m not keeping a guy in here who had a half-gram of cocaine. It is not worth my time.”

Favors' case as well as others like his prompted Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard and Atlanta Police Chief George Turner on Friday to call for the suspension of a "rocket docket" system at the Fulton Superior Court that puts nonviolent felony cases on a fast track toward disposition.

Favors' three arrests this year are among the 18 times he has been taken into custody dating back to the 1990s. His 19th arrest this week was for the murder of Trooper First Class Chadwick LeCroy, who was gunned down after police say he had pursued Favors on Bolton Road.

Howard said Favors escaped a prison sentence on drug charges in July when he appeared on a rocket docket in Fulton County Superior Court. Established by the Superior Court, the rocket docket was intended to end the backlog of nonviolent drug and property criminal cases that caused much of the overcrowding in the Fulton County jail.

Howard said his prosecutors asked that Favors, who he said had 10 convictions in Cobb and Fulton counties, be sentenced as a recidivist on the new charges of possession of cocaine, tampering with evidence and fleeing police, which were just the sort of cases that most often result in sentences of probation.

If Favors was sentenced as a habitual offender, it would have meant he would have to serve the full four years in prison. Howard said it was an attempt to take a career criminal who knew how to game the system off the street. Instead he was sentenced to 60 days to serve of a 30-year sentence and six months probation.

“The problem is that the sentence he received is typical of the sentences that are handed out in the [rocket docket] system which now handles 70 percent of the cases in Fulton County and is presided over by an non-elected magistrate instead of an elected Superior Court judge," Howard said. "The magistrates ... put them on probation."

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Doris Downs, who established the rocket docket during her tenure as chief judge, said Howard is mischaracterizing the docket.

“That is wrong,” Downs said. “He’s not going to be able to prove with any data that the sentences have changed with this new system.”

Downs contended most sentences are imposed after a plea deal has been negotiated between the prosecution and the defense. Defense lawyers, however, have long criticized Howard's office for refusing to plea bargain and further backlogging the system. They often have to rely on judges rather than on negotiated pleas.

Schwarz, the defense lawyer, said that the rocket docket moved cases but did so at the expense of meaningful jail time, regardless of whether it was because of a plea bargain or judicial fiat.

“Those people who are being forced through the system or on the rocket docket are generally being offered extremely good deals," Schwarz said. "Those can be either time served or probation. They wouldn’t be agreeing to these early decisions if they were going to prison."

Online federal court records show that a Gregory Favors was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Atlanta on July 21, 2000, to 62 months in prison for firearms violations. Howard believes it was the same man.

Page Pate, an Atlanta defense lawyer, said what was most telling about Favors state criminal record was the probation he received for another gun charge in March 2009 in Fulton Superior Court. He said the gun law, which has a five-year minimum sentence, was established to ensure felons who were arrested with a firearm went to prison.

"You are not suppose to but you can can serve it on probation," Pate said. "A judge seeing his record should have given him some prison time."

Pate said Fulton's overcrowded docket is as much the fault of Howard and the way he manages his office as the way judges manage their court cases. Howard's office creates an overcrowded docket by sending so many cases to the grand jury rather than working out or dismissing marginal ones soon after the arrest.

Howard said he sends 94 percent of the cases police bring him to the grand jury but he contended that the police and prosecutors are making better cases. Howard, who has been in office since 1997, said his office indicted less than 10,000 cases last year. In 1996, he said, the former district attorney indicted 15,000 cases.

Fulton County has an inordinate amount of crime and the jail is under a federal court order to avoid overcrowding, Howard said. Facing a backlog of muder and rape cases, the judicial system hasn't been able to deal effectively with career criminals who only commit lower level felonies, he said.

“It has been the history of our county that many defendants are not given appropriate sentences, so they show back up again,” Howard said. “I think Favors is an example of one of those inappropriate sentences. He should have been given some jail time.”

Court records show this for Favors' criminal rap sheet for 2010.

Favors’ first arrest this year occurred in February after police observed him driving at a slow speed in a neighborhood where residents had reported a large number of burglaries. Approached by police, Favors sped off and later crashed his 1991 Honda Accord into a utility pole, court records show.

Police found a lap top, a printer and a cell phone inside the car.On March 17, a Fulton County pretrial services officer recommended that Favors not be released on bond.

But a judge allowed it and two days later, Favors was released on $10,000 bond, court records show. He missed his April 29 court date and warrant was issued for his arrest. Police ran across Favors again on June 25 in northwest Atlanta, observing him making a hand-to-hand drug transaction.

Police ordered the two men to the ground and they both dropped, although police say Favors began to slowly back away. They also saw him put a small baggie in his mouth and swallow it, police said.

When he refused to place his hands behind his back, an officer subdued him with pepper spray, according to court records. Inside Favors' car, police found a small baggie of crack cocaine, court records say.

The next day, a pretrial services officer recommended Favors be detained, noting he was already on probation for drug and gun possession charges and had pending charges for the incident in Februrary.

Favors stayed in jail until his July 9 preliminary hearing, but the officer failed to appear. Magistrate Richard Hicks then allowed Favors to be released on $3,000 bond. Hicks said Thursday he granted bond because prosecutors could not show probable cause for the arrest without the officer’s testimony.

On July 23, Favors pleaded guilty to charges stemming from his February and June arrests. He received a 30-year sentence, with 60 days to be spent in custody and the rest on probation.

On Dec. 10, Atlanta police said they saw Favors and another man using a broken antenna to break into a 2004 Ford Mustang. Police ordered both men to drop. Favors’ co-defendant, Larry Browning, did as he was told. Favors ran off.

When he was finally caught,, police found a bag of powder cocaine and a screwdriver on Favors and charged him with entering an auto, possessing tools to commit a crime, possessing cocaine and two counts of obstructing a police officer.

The next day, a Fulton pretrial services officer recommended against Favors being released on bond. But Fulton Magistrate Roy C. Roberts granted Favors a a signature bond, meaning he put up no bail money.

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Roberts did not return phone calls Thursday seeking comment.