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DA shares his vision with commissioners
Billy Joe Nelson
Billy Joe Nelson

The newest district attorney for the Atlantic Judicial Circuit laid out his plans and goals for a more efficient office to the Liberty County commissioners.

Billy Joe Nelson, who was elected to the post last year and sworn in to office in late December, said he was excited about the changes he has implemented in just his first month on the job.

“It has been a learning experience,” said Nelson, who was an assistant DA prior to running and succeeding Tom Durden. “But I am very excited about where the office is going.”

Nelson also said the circuit’s population growth may led to a change in structure for the DA’s office. Currently, the ADAs are broken up into three teams, with each team handling two counties. The circuit is made up of six counties — Bryan, Evans, Liberty, Long, McIntosh and Tattnall.

Four assistant district attorneys, along with three administrative assistants and one victim advocate, are tasked for Liberty and Long cases. The other teams are Bryan and McIntosh, and Tattnall and Evans, with two ADAs, two administrative assistants one victim advocate for each of those two-county teams.

Liberty County, with the biggest population, has the most cases, and Nelson said he wants to bring that case load down. Tattnall County’s cases also include any incident that occurs in the state prisons there — Rogers State Prison, Smith State Prison and the Georgia State Prison.

“Looking into the future, my proposed structure for the office, because Liberty and Tattnall are our two heaviest caseloads, is try to break them off into their own team,” Nelson said. “Liberty deserves its own prosecutors that look at only Liberty County.”

Nelson’s aim is to have four ADAs for Liberty and two for Tattnall, and form two two-county teams covering Bryan and Evans as one unit and Long and McIntosh as another. Bryan and Evans are adjoining counties, as are Long and McIntosh with each other, and Long and McIntosh carry about the same caseloads, Nelson said.

Nelson has hired four new assistant district attorneys, most of whom have come from the Chatham circuit. “We have made great strides with new hires in the office,” he said. “They have been great assets. We’re hiring experienced prosecutors who are able to hit the ground running.”

Chief among them is chief ADA Greg McConnell, who worked for the Atlantic Judicial Circuit office from 2010–12. McConnell, with 38 years of experience as a prosecutor, also has worked in Cobb County and Chatham County.

McConnell also had been chief assistant DA under former Chatham County DA Meg Heap.

“We’re glad to have him back,” Nelson said. “I can’t state how valuable he is.”

The circuit DA’s office includes seven other superior court ADAs, two for the juvenile courts, a prosecutor for the accountability court and child support, three investigators, four victim witness advocates and 10 administrative assistants. Nelson said he is without an office manager currently and would like to hire one.

He also wants to improve efficiency in the office and begin addressing some of the case backlog.

“When you let a case linger four or five years, (the victims) can’t get closure,” he said. “Right now, that is the No. 1 focus, getting the case backlog taken care of.”

Nelson said his three key tenets are leadership, work ethic and accountability.

“Those are three things I preach to our employees every day,” he said. “If we can uphold those three, we’re on a good road and a good path toward being successful.

“We are working to efficiently, fairly and justly prosecute cases within our judicial circuit,” Nelson added. “We want to instill the principles of working ethically. We are working to lay a foundation for that now.”

As the DA, Nelson says he has in essence three clients.

“I have the people at large, I have our law enforcement community and I have victims of crime,” he said.

Nelson has begun revamping the criminal investigation division of his office, with an emphasis on support for local agencies and in-house investigations. He also wants to look at starting a gang investigation unit.

“Gangs are becoming a bigger issue across the state,” he said. “We want to try to implement some measures in our office to serve as an intelligence unit.”

In addition to streamlining his office and making it more efficient, Nelson said he wants to make sentencing for offenders more uniform across the circuit, “so we don’t have different results from Tattnall to Liberty to McIntosh.”

The state prisons — there are five Department of Corrections facilities in the circuit - and Interstate 95 also are “hidden” generators of cases, Nelson said.

“We’re at a point where caseloads are getting to be difficult to manage,” he said.

Space at the circuit’s main office on Highway 196, where it has been for nearly 40 years, isn’t an issue yet, Nelson said, and he wants to make sure the office is fully staffed first.

“It’s been a great transition so far,” he said. “We are excited about the future of our office, the future of our circuit and the future of Liberty County.”

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