‘Good citizens’ will love him. ‘Criminals will learn to hate him,’ sheriff says of new DA

When Jonathan Adams took office as district attorney in January, he faced a number of challenges in the Towaliga Judicial Circuit that includes Butts, Lamar and Monroe counties.

As the first new district attorney in the circuit in 17 years — only the second since its creation in 1999 — Adams faced a slew of new administrative tasks when he first took office.

The district attorney’s office didn’t have an office manual with policies and procedures in place, and he had to prepare for April budget hearings.

With Butts and Lamar counties considering courthouse renovations and the Monroe County district attorney’s office needing to find new office space, Adams faced additional real estate and architectural concerns.

And it all was happening in the final months before Christopher Calmer was set to stand trial in June in the 2014 fatal shooting of Monroe County deputy Michael Norris.

“It was a juggling act,” the 41-year-old Adams said.

A little more than six months later, Adams has begun building a reputation of being hard on crime while also making strides to make the district attorney’s office more efficient and modern.

He’s well-liked by law enforcement, said longtime Monroe County Sheriff John Cary Bittick.

“I think Jonathan has done a great job since he has taken office,” Bittick said.

He credited Adams for his work on the Calmer case, securing a conviction in the high-profile case despite jurors’ decision not to sentence Calmer to death.

“I’m just looking forward to working with him,” Bittick said.

Making changes

In his first months in office, Adams has asserted new goals of taking more cases to trial and taking a strong stance to push older cases forward.

Nine days after his swearing in, prosecutors indicted three people in the 2008 robbery and killing of a Butts County business owner.

Butts Sheriff Gary Long said he’d asked the circuit’s former district attorney to seek the death penalty against Fuquah Cashaw in the 1999 cold case kidnapping, sexual assault and fatal strangulation of Heather Davidson. A grand jury indicted Cashaw on murder charges in 2015.

Davidson’s family didn’t understand why prosecutors weren’t taking a harsher stance, Long said.

After reviewing the case, Adams found a number of “aggravating factors” that led him to think the case warranted seeking the death penalty, Adams said.

He filed a notice of intent to seek capital punishment in February.

“He really turned my head,” Long said of the decision. “It was a breath of fresh air to have a prosecutor come in who was taking a stand to be hard on crime.”

While law enforcement has a role in reducing crime, “ultimately it’s lying with the district attorney’s office and the district attorney and his leadership to send harsh penalties out for people committing crimes,” the sheriff said. “He has done just that”

Like Bittick, Long said he’s looking forward to working more with Adams in the future.

“The good citizens of the county will love him and the criminals will learn to hate him,” the sheriff said. “That’s exactly what we need.”

Adams said the GBI asked him to give a second look at a 2012 child molestation case that previously had been dismissed by the district attorney’s office. After finding “sufficient evidence,” he reopened the case and is pursing prosecution.

The mounds of documents that once were used in the district attorneys’ office have been replaced by desktop digital scanners that allow documents to be delivered to defense attorneys electronically, Adams said.

Staffers now participate in quarterly training days and have an office manual that clarifies workers’ responsibilities.

In an effort to standardize prosecutors’ sentencing recommendations, the office now has a list of guidelines, he said.

Goals for the future

In the next six months or so, Adams is hoping to help launch a circuitwide victims advocacy program designed to provide services to crime victims in all three counties.

Monroe County victims have been served by the sheriff’s office’s C.A.R.E. Cottage since the 1980s and the new initiative would expand the C.A.R.E. Cottage concept to all three counties, Bittick said.

Adams said his office is applying for grants to hire a second investigator and a victims’ advocate whose job will be focused on linking victims with a state compensation program and to work with partner agencies that provide victim services.

The state only pays the salary for one investigator, no matter the size of the circuit, he said.

“At the end of the day when law enforcement investigators get a case ready for an arrest, they make the arrest and then they move on,” Adams said. “Our investigators are there to take that arrest to trial, the rest of the way.”

It’s a district attorney’s office investigator’s job to help apply for warrants, listen to jail phone calls for evidence and to find victims and witnesses who may have moved before a trial begins, he said.

Looking to 2018, Adams said he wants to find strategies to partner with law enforcement and businesses to help sex trafficking victims on the road as they stop off at truck stops, restaurants and other businesses on the Interstate 75 corridor that passes through the circuit.

“There are training programs available for those staff members that work in those facilities,” he said. “There are tell-tale signs of what a victim of sex trafficking may look like.”

Stickers and signs are available that can be posted identifying places as “safe havens,” so victims can understand what to do to get help without alerting the person trafficking them, Adams said.

This story was originally published July 14, 2017 at 2:53 PM with the headline "‘Good citizens’ will love him. ‘Criminals will learn to hate him,’ sheriff says of new DA."