Augusta DA discusses major issues confronting his staff
AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - District Attorney Jared Williams held a news conference Wednesday morning to address the work of his Major Crimes Division, including the Special Victims Unit.
“Quite frankly, our office is too busy to stop and tell the community every time that we successfully litigate a case or win justice for a victim,” Williams began. “But this past week was so emblematic, so perfect an example of the office we aspire to be, and the office of this community deserves that I would be remiss if I did not take a moment to highlight for our community the work that our that our people are doing, that, the people standing with me as well as those up in the office and those in the courtrooms across the circuit every day.”
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He highlighted the recent launch of the Second Chance desk to help people clear their records and get back into the workforce.
And he noted the recent cases against two accused murderers and the conviction of Kendrick Evans of sexually preying on 12-year-old.
he said the Major Crimes Division was created in December 2021 and is made up of two specialized trial teams, the Violent Crimes and Gang Unit and the Special Victims Unit.
The Violent Crimes Unit is responsible for murders, armed robberies and violent crimes that result in grievous injury. The Special Victims Unit is responsible for sexual assaults, sex trafficking, crimes against women and children, and crimes against the vulnerable and elderly.
In 2019, the District Attorney’s Office had a 48% success rate at trial in Richmond County, he said.
“In 2022 after inception of the Major Crimes Division, our trial success rose to 80 percent,” he said.
“Without the people of this office end during the sleepless nights preparing for trial or the 2 a.m. stakeouts and searches for wayward witnesses or the heartbreaking conversations with hopeless victims ... none of this would be possible,” Williams said.
“Every single one of our employees takes on the weight of the world as they attempt to protect our entire community from the few who mean harm,” he said.
“I’m grateful for our team and the way they handle this difficult work, putting others before themselves and giving victims a voice in our courtrooms. They do this all without ever losing sight of our office’s guiding principles, our values to prosecute cases with integrity, to ensure fairness in our courts and to do justice for our communities. Integrity, fairness and justice.”
In the coming months and years, Williams said he’ll announce “more programs designed to keep kids in classrooms and out of courtrooms. We’ll announce more programs to help young people find job sites and avoid jail cells.”
But, he added: “We have never and we will never lose sight of our mission to eradicate violence in our community.”
In response to a reporter’s question, he noted that his staff is looking into an alternative sentencing structure targeting the “emerging adult category of offenders” – people between the ages of 17 and 25.
“The science and the data says that their brains are not fully formed, but that if you felonize them at that early stage, the likelihood of them staying in in the criminal justice system is very high, and so that is our best opportunity to help them stay out of the cycle of incarceration,” he said.
He said he’d be meeting with private businesses, charity organizations and a technical college “in an effort to build a program that addresses the three main deficits that we find common in every one of our cases.”
“It’s an economic opportunity deficit, it’s an educational deficit, and it’s what we call an ecosystem deficit where people don’t always have the privilege of learning certain things in the home that I did,” he said. “How to tie a tie, how to speak in an interview, financial literacy. The idea is not just to rack up convictions, but to actually change lives.”
Watch his full news conference above.
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