Bibb’s lead prosecutor Winters reflects on one year in office

It has been about a year since voters chose Greg Winters to be top prosecutor in Bibb, Crawford and Peach counties.

Since his election, the Macon native has worked to improve efficiency in the district attorney’s office and tamp down crime through greater law enforcement partnerships.

With a year left in his term, Winters has fulfilled some of his campaign promises, but he says he still has goals left to accomplish.

“I’ve enjoyed the opportunity I have been given,” Winters said. “Although we’re not perfect, we will continue to improve.”

In the past year, cases have begun to move faster through Bibb County Superior Court as a result of Winters’ efficiency changes and the help of judges and court personnel.

So far this year, 46 cases have been tried in Bibb County, compared with 25 last year. In 2011, 874 cases have been resolved through plea agreements, compared with 763 in 2010.

Judges and court workers have created more time for trials and pleas, in part by bringing in an additional judge to hear cases, he said.

While campaigning in 2010, Winters spoke of attorneys bringing in computers from home because their work computers couldn’t play videos or run crime scene software programs. Sometimes they froze while prosecutors worked on legal documents.

Since his election, wireless Internet access has been added within the district attorney’s office and Winters has replaced 12 computers that had been used for nine years or more. While Bibb County commissioners approved the replacements, the office also had acquired four computers from the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia.

“We’re in an age when we have to be able to use technology,” he said.

The new computers also have improved morale within the office.

“It helps to know you’re going to be able to do your job,” Winters said.

In recent months, the district attorney’s office has been phasing in new software that allows prosecutors to access their documents and audio files outside the office using the Internet. The transition to using the new software, also provided by the prosecuting attorneys group, will be complete Jan. 1.

The computer program automatically inputs data that’s already in the Georgia Crime Information Center database, such as a person’s name, description and address.

For a district attorney’s office that handles 30 to 40 warrants each workday, it saves employees’ time not to have to re-enter that information, Winters said.

The software also allows prosecutors to view information about pending and completed cases in 140 Georgia counties to see if a local defendant is facing similar charges elsewhere.

Another initiative put in place soon after Winters’ election was a program requiring prosecutors to take turns carrying an on-call cell phone to provide law enforcement better access to legal advice while investigating cases.

“It allows law enforcement to call one number anytime to reach a prosecutor,” Winters said. Previously, prosecutors took turns being on-call during the day, but no one was designated at night.

Prosecutors help to word search warrants and guide police to collect evidence that police may not need for an arrest, but that might be helpful when a case goes to trial, said police Lt. Carl Fletcher.

Career criminals

Another of Winters’ initiatives that’s been helpful to law enforcement is a group of lists compiled by officers and deputies that are given to prosecutors to help get “career criminals’ ” cases through the court system at a faster pace, Fletcher said.

Without the lists, the offenders might be released on bond and commit new crimes before their cases go to trial, he said.

“It’s a revolving circle unless we bring it to the attention of the DA,” Fletcher said. “They’re getting the really bad guys in the courtroom quicker than in the past.”

Germany Ray and Shawn Kitchens, both 19, were on the lists before their murder convictions in separate cases this year, he said.

Winters’ changes also have had an impact at the Bibb County jail, said Bibb County Chief Deputy Russell Nelson.

The jail population is smaller than in the past, and inmates are making comments about sentences being issued at the courthouse.

Inmates have said, “They’re really handing down some serious time down there,” Nelson said.

Nelson attributes the lower jail population in part to cases traveling through the court system faster and convicted inmates being sent off to state prison.

While many of the cases Winters handled in the office as an attorney before his election have been reassigned to other prosecutors, he still carries a small caseload, ranging from drugs and property crimes to violent crimes.

In November, he secured a murder conviction for Antonio Browner, the 20-year-old man who fatally shot a Family Dollar store assistant manager April 12 during a botched robbery. Browner was sentenced to two life sentences for the killing and a later carjacking attempt.

In January, he prosecuted Maurious Javon Durham, who received life without parole in the murder and robbery of 41-year-old Cornelius Baldwin on Jan. 9, 2010, on Churchill Street.

On June 20, when 27-year-old Lauren Giddings’ dismembered remains where discovered outside her Georgia Avenue apartment building, Winters was on the scene along with police investigators.

He’s remained involved in the case by representing the prosecution at hearings for Giddings’ accused killer, Stephen Mark McDaniel, appearing at news conferences and meeting with police.

Targeting truancy

As Election Day nears in 2012, voters will be paying attention to Winters’ decisions, especially as they relate to the Giddings case, said Charles Weston, a former Macon Judicial Circuit district attorney. Weston served as DA from 1994 to 2000.

Among the district attorney’s office’s upcoming decisions in the case is whether to seek the death penalty against McDaniel, 26.

Winters hasn’t said whether he will seek capital punishment in the case.

Weston said he doesn’t think Winters will let politics influence his decisions on cases in the public eye like the Giddings case.

“I’m sure he will make a decision based on the legal issues and the evidentiary issues,” he said.

While campaigning last year, Winters also spoke of the need to reach Bibb County’s youth. Although during the campaign he suggested that students sit in on court hearings, Winters said his focus has shifted to efforts addressing truancy in Bibb County schools.

It’s rare that a person convicted has completed high school or taken college courses, he said.

Winters’ office has partnered with the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services, Bibb County State and Juvenile courts and the Bibb County school system to try to fight truancy and reach students before they turn to crime.

“Something has to be done,” he said.

The group announced in September that is was considering ways of encouraging parents to keep children in school, including possibly taking benefits away from families of truant students.

Winters also is working with the public defender’s office to examine a way of handling cases more quickly that’s now in use in Savannah.

In Savannah, between 45 and 50 percent of cases are handled within 45 days of a person’s arrest, he said.

Using a practice like Savannah’s, the district attorney’s office would be able to identify cases quicker in the court process that either should be dismissed or which could end in a plea agreement.

The cases generally don’t involve violent felonies. They’re usually property cases. Some involve suspects who are caught by authorities while committing the crime, Winters said.

In Bibb County, prosecutors generally don’t receive case files until after police or deputies are finished with their investigations. That’s the earliest time when a case can be dismissed by prosecutors or a plea negotiated, Winters said.

In Savannah, prosecutors get as much information as possible within two weeks of an arrest, he said.

While the system hasn’t been presented to county commissioners and would need judges’ approval, Winters said he sees potential benefits for Bibb County.

Prosecutors would have more time to focus on other cases and the county would save money with inmates either being released or sent to state prison without waiting months for a trial.

In the next year, Winters also hopes to add more volunteers to his office’s division that provides support for crime victims and witnesses. He’d like to have enough personnel to be able to reach victims soon after a crime happens and provide information about the court process and helpful services, he said.

Information from Telegraph archives was used in this story.

This story was originally published December 5, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Bibb’s lead prosecutor Winters reflects on one year in office."