By GREG BLUESTEIN
Associated Press Writer
ATLANTA- A southern Georgia county has agreed to repay the “room and board” it charged jail inmates who were behind bars awaiting trial.
The agreement this week resolves a federal lawsuit contending Clinch County had no legal power to charge inmates $18 a day.
A total of $27,000 will be returned to people who paid the fees from 2000 to 2004.
“The sheriff had no authority to charge these fees and he certainly had no authority to threaten people with jail time for failure to pay them,” said Sarah Geraghty, an attorney for the Southern Center for Human Rights.
Sheriff Winston Peterson’s office referred calls seeking comment Tuesday to county attorney Rick Strickland, who was not immediately available for comment.
Geraghty’s group and Atlanta law firm King & Spalding filed the complaint in November 2004, arguing that even judges can’t impose fines unless they are specifically authorized by Georgia law.
Clinch County officials had argued the fine was the county’s way to punish criminals instead of taxpayers for wrongdoing.
One of the two plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Willie Williams Jr., was charged $4,608 for the eight months he spent in the jail. Before he was released on bail in June 2004 he had to sign a promissory note agreeing to weekly payments of $20 until his debt was paid. He said he had paid a total of $140 before the settlement was reached. The charges that put him behind bars in the first place were dropped on Monday.
Ronda Cross-Scott, a former county commissioner, helped bring the practice to light after her constituents complained that they needed to borrow money to pay a “jail bill.”
“This was their (officials’) vacation money,” she said. “There was no paper trail for the money that was collected.”
Since taking her stand against the policy, Cross-Scott has lost her seat in a narrow election and been indicted on 14 felony counts alleging voter and election fraud. She said the charges are a retaliation for her public stance against the county’s practices.
“You open your big mouth and they go after you,” she said. “But if I had to do it all over again, I’d do it.”