Georgia Jail Detainee Released After 10-Year Wait for Trial
When he was freed on March 27, 2024, Maurice Jimmerson described how it felt to see his daughter, now 14, for the first time since she was three: “Blessed.”
Jimmerson spent over a decade in jail before he was convicted. He was one of five people arrested on suspicion of a drive-by Albany shooting that killed Desmond Williams and William Davis, Jr., in 2013. Two co-defendants, Desmond Warren and Harrell Lorenzo Hicks, were tried and acquitted in June 2017. A third, Condell Benyard, was also acquitted at a July 2023 trial, after a seven-year wait. The fourth, Jawaski Kennedy, served time for related terrorism and assault convictions before he was paroled, only to be killed in another drive-by shooting in 2021.
Dougherty County District Attorney Gregory Edwards offered a list of excuses for the delay in Jimmerson’s case, including a courthouse flood and the COVID-19 pandemic. After his first public defender quit, it took eight months to find a replacement. Attorney Andrew Fleischman then took up the case pro bono, securing a June 2023 trial that resulted in a hung jury. The attorney then negotiated Jimmerson’s plea deal to assault and weapons charges, resulting in a 30-year probated sentence.
With credit for time served, Jimmerson was finally released after one of the nation’s longest-ever pre-trial detentions. As PLN reported, Devalos Perkins pleaded guilty to manslaughter in December 2023, after 11 years awaiting trial in a North Carolina jail. [See: PLN, May 2024, p.59.]
Even when “getting hostages out of other countries like North Korea or Iran,” Fleischman noted, “the average time is six years.” And “[w]e talk about those countries having failed puppet justice systems with no expectation of due process,” he said. “[Y]et we have Americans in this country waiting 10 years for an opportunity to force the state to prove its case.”
He added, “[T]hat to me is outrageous.”
Sources: Daily Wire, Reason, WALB