DEPARTING DA PULLS NO PUNCHES

Dekalb's Tom Morgan Set to Exit Saturday

As he ends a 21-year career as a prosecutor, DeKalb County District
Attorney J. Tom Morgan offers some blunt warnings:

. People increasingly don't trust cops, leading to juries that won't convict.

. Frustration of victims who don't see offenders held accountable could
invite vigilante justice.

. Many citizens regard the war on drugs as misguided and hypocritical.

"I think our whole war on drugs needs to be looked at," Morgan said as he
prepares to leave office Saturday. He said people see crack cocaine users
being sent to prison "and on the other hand you've got Rush Limbaugh
getting thousands of [prescription pills] and he's making millions of
dollars and he's out on the street."

The result, he said, is that "juries will no longer hold individuals
accountable in drug cases. . . . Juries are telling us that prosecution is
not the answer."

Morgan has spent most of his adult life putting criminals behind bars. He
is nationally recognized as an expert on child abuse. He lost big and then
won big in the case against the suspects in the 2000 slaying of DeKalb
Sheriff-elect Derwin Brown and became a pain for county Chief Executive
Officer Vernon Jones.

Morgan has received praise from prosecutors -- who gave him a prestigious
award last year -- and defense attorneys. Dwight Thomas, who represented a
defendant in a DeKalb death penalty trial last year, calls Morgan "a worthy
adversary and professional friend" whose office is regarded by defense
lawyers as one of the best in the state. Now Morgan, a Democrat who started
in the DeKalb district attorney's office in 1983, is leaving, 11 months
before his third term as district attorney was to end. He will work on
civil litigation and white-collar crime cases with Balch & Bingham, a
Birmingham-based law firm with an office in Buckhead.

During a recent interview, Morgan's office already showed the signs of his
departure. Walls were stripped bare except for a dozen or so hooks; shelves
were half-empty.

There was a time, he said, when a police officer's word was like gold to a
jury. Today, he said, some jurors seem to distrust all officers -- perhaps
because of highly publicized police misconduct, including the conviction of
former DeKalb Sheriff Sidney Dorsey for ordering the assassination of
Brown, his elected successor.

Morgan said the public should understand that "99.9 percent of our police
officers are good people."

Jurors' distrust of police leads to more acquittals, which Morgan said
could one day so much undermine confidence in the criminal justice system
that people pursue vigilante justice.

"We're a long way from that, but I see victims and victim advocates very
frustrated," he said.

Few Political Dustups

Morgan has largely avoided political conflicts. But as three successive
grand juries last year delved into county finances in a noncriminal
investigation, CEO Vernon Jones complained that Morgan was conducting a
"witch hunt" to tarnish his reputation.

In his State of the County address this month, Jones accused Morgan of
"convening several grand juries for the sole purpose of public
embarrassment" and of making "misguided and uninformed allegations."

Morgan insisted citizens on the grand jury drove the investigation, and
that two reports that contained criticism of Jones -- including a finding
that his security detail was "a very expensive decoration" -- were written
by grand jurors, not the district attorney's office.

After the State of the County speech, Morgan called Jones "paranoid" and
accused him of trying to mislead the public.

That spat was far from the most trying moment of Morgan's career. The low
point, he said, was in March 2002, when his office failed to win
convictions against two defendants in the December 2000 assassination of
Brown. Morgan had agreed to give immunity to two admitted conspirators in
the murder in exchange for their testimony, but a DeKalb jury did not
believe them. So at that point Morgan had zero murder verdicts out of four
suspects in a case that drew international attention.

"District attorneys from around the country told me this could be a
career-ending case," Morgan said at the time.

Things had changed by 2003. Morgan won guilty verdicts against Dorsey, who
was sentenced to life in prison for murder, racketeering and theft. In
recognition of that victory, the International Association of Prosecutors
made Morgan the first American district attorney to receive its annual
Special Achievement Award.

Also last year, Gov. Sonny Perdue appointed Morgan as special prosecutor in
the case against Bobby Whitworth, a former parole board member and
Corrections commissioner. In December, Morgan won a jury verdict in Fulton
County convicting Whitworth on a felony charge of accepting money while a
state official in exchange for influencing legislation.

One thing Morgan never did as district attorney was have a defendant
executed. DeKalb juries have been reluctant to impose the death penalty,
and Morgan has founddefendants and victims' families receptive to plea
bargains for life without parole.

Morgan sought a death sentence last year against cop-killer Bautista
Ramirez, but a jury gave Ramirez life with the chance of parole.

Tom West, one of Ramirez's lawyers, praised Morgan. His infrequent use of
death penalty prosecutions "means a great deal and demonstrates his
character as a prosecutor," West said.

As he leaves office, Morgan gives a flat answer to the question of whether
America needs the death penalty: "No, we do not. We need life without
parole and to be able to get that with the use of aggravating circumstances
[such as torture] and without the cost of a death penalty case.

"It's not the severity of the punishment, but the certainty of the
conviction that changes behavior," he said.

Morgan's last act as district attorney may be to witness the execution,
scheduled for Tuesday night, of Willie James Hall, who was convicted of
murdering his estranged wife in DeKalb before Morgan took office.

Perdue, a Republican, will appoint a temporary successor to Morgan. Voters
in heavily Democratic DeKalb will have their say on a full-time successor
in November. Morgan hasn't endorsed anyone, but had some pointed advice
about the "very talented pool of lawyers" in his office.

"I would hope the people will elect a district attorney who would recognize
how talented these people are and would keep them on staff," he said.