Tag: crime

In early may, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard announced that he will reopen one of the most notorious criminal proceedings in American history: the trial of National Pencil Company superintendent Leo M. Frank for the murder of child laborer Mary Phagan.

Acquitting Tex McIver of malice murder meant the state had not proven that he had planned to kill his wife Diane. But convicting him of aggravated assault meant he had intended to shoot her.

One man is recovering at Grady Memorial Hospital after he was shot outside JCT Kitchen, Ford Fry's popular restaurant and bar in the Westside Provisions District just before 9 p.m. last night.

Last year, at a time when the use of death penalty had dropped to historic lows nationwide, Georgia executed nine people convicted of murder, more than any other state. Don’t expect that pace to continue.

For years, Susan lived with a hyperawareness of her surroundings, an obsession with safety. A slamming door would bring her back to the sound of the gunshot and that fetid crawl space. She would wake from a nightmare, heart pounding, listening for unexpected sounds in the house.

Emmett Bass is a gambling man. In 1975 he and another man were arrested in Henry County for armed robbery of a package store. Bass was convicted and given a 15-year sentence. Three years later, on April 3, 1978, Bass was on a work detail near Highway 16 in Griffin when he went to relieve himself in the trees. Instead of returning to where his fellow inmates were cleaning ditches in the hot sun, he continued deeper into the woods.

“That kind of trafficking—whether it’s money or guns—within the airport, it creates an additional layer of harm to the community,” says John Horn, U.S. attorney in Atlanta. “The airport is such a huge institution to [Atlanta]; we have the obligation to make sure that it’s safe.”

Is graffiti artistic expression? Vandalism? Criminal turf-staking? The lines between what’s acceptable and not have blurred.

The best Howard Sills could remember, there hadn’t been a double homicide in Putnam County since May 1984, 30 years earlier. In minutes, the mood inside the lake house swung from wild intensity to who the hell did this? This, the sheriff told himself, ain’t local talent.

Atlanta Police Lieutenant LeAnne Browning recalls her days as a patrol officer. “Our lieutenants would say, ‘Okay, I want you to look at the beat books so you can know what’s out there on your beat.’ Well, the beat books are like this thick with reports,” she says, holding her hands a couple of feet apart. “And you’d sit there and thumb through it all, and there was no time because they were then kicking you out of the precinct to handle calls.” She pauses before pointing to her computer screen. “That’s the old way of doing things. This­—it’s right here.”