Two men campaigning to be Towaliga circuit’s district attorney

Two men are campaigning to be top prosecutor in the Towaliga Judicial Circuit that includes Butts, Lamar and Monroe counties.

The winner of the May 24 election will take office in January and be tasked with final preparations for the death penalty murder trial of alleged deputy killer Christopher Keith Calmer, which is set for June 2017.

Incumbent District Attorney Richard Milam is campaigning on his record and pending cases he wants to see prosecuted before he retires.

Jonathan Adams, an assistant district attorney in the Macon Judicial Circuit, wants to bring change to the Towaliga office that he said has become complacent and needs new leadership.

Milam

Appointed district attorney when the Towaliga Judicial Circuit was created in 1999, Milam touts his organizational skills that he said help him lead a staff of six lawyers in three offices.

He said he attends every court hearing — absent a scheduling conflict — and acts as “quality control,” helping cases move along toward trial without “anything falling into the cracks.”

While fighting for jail time for burglaries and car break-ins that might not result in an incarceration in other circuits, Milam said he also uses his background of 25 years as a private practicing Jackson attorney to help prosecutors understand how a defense attorney might view a case.

Milam said he’s helped bring audio visual presentations into the courtroom, trying to “keep up with the times.”

Before becoming district attorney, he handled two death penalty cases and as a prosecutor has declared the state’s intention to seek capital punishment in three other cases, one being the still pending shooting death of Monroe County deputy Michael Norris, he said.

Milam said he also helped see two other death cases — Lake Juliette killer Andrew Allen Cook and Timothy Carr, who was convicted in the 1992 robbery and slaying of a teenager near Bolingbroke — through postconviction appellate and clemency hearings. A prior district attorney initially took the cases to trial.

At 67, an age when Milam said people might be thinking about retirement, Milam said he and his staff have four pending murder cases. One of them, the Calmer case, is the biggest case of his career, he said.

He wants to see those cases go to trial before leaving.

“I want to do it,” he said of the Calmer trial. “I was there that night.”

Two murder cases are pending in Butts County, and another murder case is pending in Lamar County.

“I have unfinished business,” Milam said. “I’d like to see it through.”

Milam lives in Jackson with his wife and has three grown children and five grandchildren.

Adams

Adams, a Monroe County resident, said he’s running for office in part because of his three young daughters.

“As a domestic violence prosecutor, I realized the statistics are that one of every three women will be either a victim of domestic violence or sexually assaulted,” he said.

After hearing concerns from victims and law enforcement in the community where he lives, Adams said he decided to run after learning that nearly 70 percent of domestic violence cases and about 50 percent of sex crimes cases are dismissed by prosecutors.

“That, to me, is huge,” he said.

He said he’s also concerned that the circuit averages just six trials a year, including felonies and misdemeanors.

If elected, Adams said he’d bring leadership he’s learned from serving as a military police officer in the Georgia Army National Guard, dismiss fewer cases and take more cases to trial.

He said he comes from a judicial circuit with a higher volume of cases, and he’s used to working at a faster pace. In the past two years, he’s prosecuted eight murder cases.

Adams started work as a law clerk in the Macon Circuit as a second-year law student in 2000. Before his scheduled 2002 graduation, he was deployed overseas, where he was stationed at Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq during the invasion.

After returning home in 2004, he went to work in the Macon district attorney’s office and moved to Monroe County about three years ago. He said he’s handled a wide variety of cases and if elected, he said he’d be able to pick up the files for pending cases, look at the evidence and do what’s needed.

Adams took over the last murder case he handled, the 2013 slaying of Chassity Lester, from a prior prosecutor. The case ended with Brandon Davis, Lester’s daughter’s father, pleading guilty to murder March 14.

Although he hasn’t directly handled a death penalty case, Adams said he’d take training offered by the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council of Georgia if elected as he prepares for the Calmer trial. The council also has a prosecutor who specializes in death penalty cases who’s available to help, he said.

Despite Milam’s claims of unfinished business, Adams said “it’s not an office of one person. It’s an office of many people who come together as a team that need strong leadership that’s not being provided.”

Looking across the state, there are many district attorney’s offices with successful leaders who were elected without ever working in the office, he said.

“I think that’s exactly what the office needs,” Adams said.

This story was originally published May 9, 2016 at 4:13 PM with the headline "Two men campaigning to be Towaliga circuit’s district attorney."