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Friday, Jun. 26, 2009

Former Telfair sheriff gets three years in prison

DUBLIN — Former Telfair County Sheriff Jim Williamson was sentenced to 36 months in federal prison Thursday stemming from allegations that he embezzled fine money, accepted a bribe and purchased personal items with county funds.

Williamson, 49, who left office in December, is scheduled to start serving his prison sentence later this summer.

“I’m just glad it’s over,” he said outside the courtroom.

Williamson pleaded guilty to a charge of “honest services” fraud in January, just a week after his second term as sheriff ended.

“I feel like I was a good person except for that last year,” he told U.S. District Judge Dudley Bowen.

A pre-sentence report compiled by the government recommended a sentence of nearly four years in prison. Williamson could have received 20 years behind bars.

Before handing down the sentence, Bowen alluded to the “tragedy of another Telfair County sheriff being in this courtroom and what a squandered opportunity (Williamson) had to redeem that office.”

In 1994, former Telfair County Sheriff Ronnie Walker was sentenced to 10 years in prison for protecting marijuana growers.

Eventually the county imposed a two-term limit on all elected county offices to guard against corruption.

“Telfair County still seems to be a place that ... is perceived to be either above or beneath the law,” Bowen said.

The judge also alluded to a vote-buying scandal in neighboring Dodge County that sent that county’s sheriff, Jackson Jones, to prison in 1999.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Tanner said Williamson committed a “monumental breach of trust.” He asked Bowen to consider the history of corruption not only in Telfair but also surrounding counties in the final sentence.

“It’s a tragedy that law enforcement in this district is infected with that sort of crime,” Tanner said.

Williamson’s lawyer, Ashley McLaughlin, asked that Williamson not be “punished for the misdeeds of others.” He presented Bowen with about a dozen letters written on Williamson’s behalf by Telfair County residents. He contended that Williamson fell prey to “political pressures and temptations” due to financial difficulties.

“There’s been a lifetime of good intent and good actions before that period of ill intent and bad actions,” McLaughlin said.

According to court testimony, Williamson collected fines that were never paid to the county’s Probate Court and kept $5,000 seized in a traffic stop.

The sheriff also mailed a letter and a check drawn from a county account to make a monthly payment on an all-terrain vehicle kept for his personal use, an FBI agent testified at an earlier hearing.

Williamson also was accused of accepting money to get a Telfair State Prison inmate transferred to the county jail so the inmate could spend time with his girlfriend.

When pleading guilty in January, Williamson told Bowen that he denied accepting money from the inmate and pocketing the cash from the traffic stop, but he still wanted to plead guilty.

Williamson, who has a 3-year-old daughter, must also serve three years under supervised release and perform 150 hours of community service once he’s out of prison.

Bowen did not fine Williamson because, the judge said, he wants to make sure restitution is paid to the county.

Just how much restitution is owed is still in dispute. FBI and GBI agents said Williamson destroyed records that would have helped determine how much money the sheriff took. Also, Williamson returned the four-wheeler to the county, and Bowen said the county could either keep the four-wheeler or sell it and credit its value toward restitution, which was set at $7,158.