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OK, we need to talk about an asolutely bananas election campaign & result out of Georgia. It's about Muscogee County, which right on the border with Alabama, and some of its adjacent counties.
It all started mid-May. Mark Jones, a lawyer challenging the incumbent DA in the Democratic primary, decided to shoot a campaign video featuring ppl rapping, & a car doing doughnuts on an empty parking lot. I'll let you check it out. A lot follows.https://www.facebook.com/watch/?t=36&v=837506603429162 …
Fast-forward five days: the police arrested two of the men who were part of the shooting of that video, accusing them of damaging public property due to the marks left by the car doing doughnuts. Both in their early twenties, they face felony charges.
Days later: Mark Jones, the DA candidate, was arrested too, and also facing FELONY charges. Also for creating a "danger" for the public. The police even alerted the community. Jones turned himself in the day after the arrest warrant was issued, mind you. https://www.ajc.com/news/rap-video-produced-georgia-district-attorney-race-nets-arrests/1tWSfhhRx6eHiGsH1eSEGO/ …pic.twitter.com/9uLu2fFCjK
Parenthical #1: Strangely, the AJC's story on Jones's arrest (see above) tied this case to Jones's being stopped in the past for DUIs, when he wasn't driving the car in video, so I'm unclear on the link.
Jones presented this as an attempt to "suppress the vote". The DA (Julia Slater) quickly insisted she was not a part of this case, & she recused herself from prosecuting. (The prosecutors' council kicked it off to another DA.) Also, the judge was a former ADA in DA's office.
All 3 people were initially held without bond and stayed in jail for at least a night. Jones, who is white, was then released without conditions. The 2 volunteers, who are both black, were released on bonds that topped $31,000 (you need $$ to not be in jail).
They got out of jail pretrial, but with felony charges hanging over their head. Jones quickly held a rally that made the point that this series of events was the problem with the local system. https://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/politics-government/election/article243093206.html …pic.twitter.com/QcJM2mbf5I
In the few weeks since the mid-May campaign video, though, the world had changed. Protests grew against policing. And the police arrested a bunch of people who have faced charges of their own. Mark Jones worked as the defense attorney of most. https://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/local/crime/article243201806.html …pic.twitter.com/oJE3j6MXvD
And then before you know it, it was Election Day: June 9. Just 3 weeks since the rap video was shot. I admit I didn't think much of this at this point; whatever you think of incumbent's responsibility in all this, I just asumed this would be too much for Jones to overcome.
And then Mark Jones won. He secured the Democratic nomination yesterday by about 6 percentage points against Julia Slater, the incumbent. And there's no Republican who has filed for office, so Jones will be the next DA of this judicial circuit.
Codas: 1. Felony charges remain, as far as I can see. Incl. against the 2 black men charged for being part of the video. 2. Policy matters. Jones ran against jail "backlog" (which meant too much pretrial detention/overcrowding), but I was not able to reach him about specifics.
We all read so much wild stuff about legal system that I myself lose sensitivity to how things are actually batshit, so I'm glad I pulled it out in this one, & that ppl agree. Also! a plug that my newsletter has lots on DA races... tho nothing as juicy https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScU9SxvanepEFUQYtJ9amOYw-Q7f4DRQl6tfSBiT0P3sWN6XQ/viewform …
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