by Ty Tagami | Dec 8, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A metro Atlanta lawmaker accused of theft of government funds in connection with COVID-19 relief pleaded not guilty in federal court Monday.
Rep. Sharon Henderson, D-Covington, walked into the courtroom in downtown Atlanta wearing ankle cuffs, after she was arrested at her home in the morning.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Justin S. Anand made her surrender her passport but allowed her to go free on a $10,000 unsecured bond.
Henderson, who represents an area around Covington in southeast metro Atlanta, faces a dozen criminal counts.
Anand said she was accused of two counts of theft of government funds and 10 counts of making false statements.
The Department of Justice said Henderson had sought federal pandemic unemployment benefits, filing eight weekly certifications that she was an employee of Henry County Schools even though she had not worked there since 2018 when she served briefly as a substitute teacher.
“It is shocking that a public official would allegedly lie to profit from an emergency program designed to help suffering community members,” Theodore S. Hertzberg, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, said in a statement.
Henderson’s constituents may have no representation in the legislative session that starts Jan. 12 because she could be suspended by then.
The Georgia constitution requires the governor to appoint a review commission to consider whether an indictment “relates to and adversely affects” a lawmaker’s ability to serve the public.
That commission, which must comprise Attorney General Chris Carr and a member of the House and Senate selected by Gov. Brian Kemp, must issue a ruling within 14 days. But Kemp has no deadline, and he must wait 14 days after receiving a copy of the indictment before he appoints the panel.
Kemp’s office said Monday afternoon that it had not yet received a copy of the indictment. A spokesperson for House Speaker Jon Burns said his office was aware of the financial fraud allegations but had no comment.
There is precedent for indicted lawmakers to continue serving. Sen. Shawn Still, R-Johns Creek, remained in office after a Fulton County grand jury indicted him along with Donald Trump and other allies in connection with their actions after the 2020 election.
The case was dismissed last month at the request of a special prosecutor after Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis was removed over ethical concerns. Still said he had no criminal intent and was acting on the advice of a lawyer in the belief that he was doing his duty to participate in the election process.
by Ty Tagami | Dec 8, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Two Cobb County women lost their lives because of a few thousand dollars, and soon the man convicted of killing them and taking their money is scheduled to meet his own end.
Eighteen years ago, Stacey Ian Humphreys was convicted of murder and other crimes in the 2003 deaths of Cindy Williams and Lori Brown.
His lawyers finally exhausted his appeals in October when the U.S. Supreme Court, in a move that inspired controversy, decided against him again after twice declining to hear his earlier appeals. That was after the Georgia Supreme Court had twice issued decisions that did not go his way.
On Dec. 17 at 7 p.m., Humphreys is to become the 55th Georgia inmate to die by lethal injection. He was born in 1973, the year Georgia reinstated capital punishment after a brief pause over litigation.
He was sentenced to death for the murders of two real estate agents during the lunch hour on Nov. 3, 2003. Williams was working in a construction company’s model home at a new Cobb County subdivision when Humphreys walked in.
Brown then entered during or after the attack on Williams.
The women’s bodies were found near their desks. They had both been stripped and shot in the head, according to Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office.
Williams had been strangled with her own underwear and shot in her back and then her head. Brown had been choked or struck in the throat before she was shot.
Carr’s office detailed the evidence against Humphreys.
A felon on parole, he had skipped work that day and then missed a meeting with his parole officer four days later. Police caught him in Wisconsin five days after the double killing. Blood in his Dodge Durango and on a Ruger 9mm pistol recovered from the console contained DNA from the women.
Humphreys had gained access to their bank accounts before killing them, according to the attorney general’s office. By the time police caught up with him, $3,000 had been withdrawn from their accounts. Humphreys had deposited $1,000 in his own account and had about $800 in cash.
In September 2007, a jury convicted him of murder, assault, armed robbery and kidnapping. He pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm by a felon and was sentenced to death.
Then followed 18 years of legal maneuvers that finally ran their course on Oct. 21, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider Humphreys’ petition for a writ of habeas corpus, which had been denied by the U.S. district and appellate courts in Georgia.
The decision provoked a dissent by the three liberal justices, who said “extreme juror misconduct” had deprived Humphreys of his Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury.
One juror had misled the court during jury selection, claiming she had been unharmed during an attempted rape but later confiding that she had, indeed, been assaulted, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in their dissent.
The other eleven jurors wanted to sentence Humphreys to life without parole, but this lone juror was relentless and her “misconduct appears to have singlehandedly changed the verdict from life without parole to death,” Sotomayor wrote.
Ineffective counsel failed to raise the issue, and by the time new lawyers did, the Georgia Supreme Court and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that it was too late based on Georgia law.
Sotomayor wrote that by refusing to hear Humphreys’ case, the high court was “allowing a death sentence tainted by a single juror’s extraordinary misconduct to stand.”
Still, on Dec. 1, Cobb County District Attorney Sonya F. Allen informed Chief Superior Court Judge Ann B. Harris that all legal avenues to avoid execution had been traveled and that it was time to sign Humphreys’ death warrant.
Harris concurred, ordering his execution sometime during the week before Christmas.
Two days later, Tyrone Oliver, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Corrections, announced the timing of Humphreys’ execution to occur at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison in Jackson.
by Ty Tagami | Dec 8, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene criticized President Donald Trump in a televised interview Sunday, saying he had abandoned his MAGA followers to help “major industries” and “big donors.”
During her nearly 14-minute interview on the CBS News program 60 Minutes, the Rome Republican criticized Trump and gave one reason why she had decided to step down next month, a year before her term expires: safety.
After she had broken with the president over several political issues — the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files chief among them — Trump had publicly called her a traitor. Then, both she and her son had experienced threats of violence, a pipe bomb against her home and death for her son.
The subject line of the threat against her son bore the same words Trump had uttered: “Marjorie Traitor Greene,” she said, telling interviewer Lesley Stahl that the threat therefore was “directly fueled” by Trump.
Greene said that when she told Vice President J.D. Vance about it, he told her they would investigate. But when she told Trump, he responded with words she wouldn’t repeat, sharing only that the president “wasn’t very nice” and was “extremely unkind.”
Stahl and her crew visited Rome for the interview after Greene’s surprise announcement late last month that she would be leaving Congress Jan. 5, a year before her term expires. Greene said her decision was in part due to her vehement disagreement with Trump over the Epstein files.
She wanted them released. He did not.
She said Trump had told her the release of the files would “hurt people … . I don’t know what that means,” she said. “I don’t know who they are.”
Greene said she had been deeply moved by watching Epstein’s victims tremble as they gave their first media interviews, and she said they deserved the full release of the files that they had been seeking.
Greene also broke with Trump over his decision to bomb Iran for Israel, for his support of the cryptocurrency industry and for his administration’s decision to allow vaccinations for Covid-19, which she deemed to be a nod to the pharmaceutical industry.
Greene, who was an ardent supporter of Trump, often wearing a red MAGA cap, said she is not MAGA anymore. That term belongs to Trump, she said. She is “America First.”
When Greene criticized the toxicity of contemporary politics, Stahl interjected, noting that Greene herself had contributed. Greene pushed back, saying Stahl was being accusatory.
Greene said that Republican members of Congress were terrified of crossing Trump and of being targeted by a “nasty Truth Social” post from him, but she said they ridiculed him behind his back, openly siding with him only after he won the Republican nomination last year.
Greene said her decision to leave politics was a transparent one, noting that few believe it, giving her a wink when she says she has “zero” interest in running for president or for the Senate and that she is not running for Georgia governor.
But she said it is true. She has no grand designs.
“Surprise, surprise,” Greene said, “I’m not your politician with a whole itinerary of plans or political ambitions.”
by Ty Tagami | Dec 5, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — In a nod to the spread of opioids, Georgia is installing overdose reversal kits at all 2,300 public schools in the state using money from a legal settlement with the pharmaceutical industry.
Distribution began this fall in parts of metro Atlanta and in southwest and central Georgia. The initiative is expected to be completed statewide by spring.
“The opioid settlement funds give us a once-in-a-generation opportunity to turn tragedy into prevention,” Kevin Tanner, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, said in a statement announcing the distribution Friday. “Putting overdose reversal kits in every Georgia school is a practical, compassionate use of those dollars. It means we are giving our educators and communities a fighting chance to stop a preventable death.”
The Georgia Department of Education is partnering with Tanner’s agency to distribute training resources to school staff. State School Superintendent Richard Woods said the partnership will ensure every school is ready for an emergency.
The initiative comes after Senate Bill 395 became law last year. Sen. Clint Dixon, R-Buford, co-sponsored “Wesley’s Law” in memory of a family member who died of a fentanyl overdose. The law requires schools to stock naloxone — a product branded as Narcan or Evzio — and allows teachers and other school staff to carry and administer the medication on school property.
by Ty Tagami | Dec 4, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A record number enrolled in Georgia’s public colleges and universities this fall as the state’s lottery continued to produce a windfall for academic scholarships, but a bipartisan legislative committee thinks too many students are still being left behind.
More than 2 million have received a HOPE Scholarship since the public lottery that funds them was established three decades ago.
To qualify, they had to graduate high school with at least a 3.0 grade point average. They also had to maintain their GPA in college to keep the money.
Many have slipped below that line, especially students from lower-income families. They must work while they take classes, leaving less time for studies. When they lose HOPE, they fall further behind, often failing to improve their grades enough to recover the scholarship. Many then drop out.
So, a state Senate committee adopted bipartisan recommendations this week calling for Georgia to provide financial aid based on need and not just merit, like 48 other states.
“This is about affordability and about opening doors,” said Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, who led the study committee that concluded its work Tuesday.
Republicans joined Democrats to unanimously approve the final recommendations. Their report, released Wednesday, said Georgia should adopt a $126 million need-based financial aid program that could be funded from $1.7 billion in Georgia Lottery Corporation reserves.
Converting the recommendations into law could be a tough sell though.
Some are dubious about need-based financial aid, dimming prospects for such a measure in a General Assembly dominated by conservatives.
For instance, the Selig Center for Economic Growth, a business think tank at the University of Georgia, wrote in a 2019 report that need-based financial aid “sometimes has been cast negatively as a social welfare program.”
It said the state could face a shortage of skilled labor if nothing changes. A growing pool of highly skilled workers attracts employers that offer more skilled jobs, in a “virtuous cycle” of growth that the state should promote by spending more on financial aid, said the Selig Center report, which was co-authored by former UGA president Charles B. Knapp.
“Whatever views are held on this matter, the reality is that without a need-based financial aid program, Georgia is leaving potential economic growth on the table and shortchanging its citizens,” said the report, which was cited by Orrock’s committee.
But the HOPE Scholarship has produced a treasured legacy, and many lawmakers could be wary of drawing from its foundation in lottery funding.
On Monday, the day before Orrock’s committee approved its recommendations, Gov. Brian Kemp lauded HOPE, noting that more than 2.25 million students had received one of the scholarships in the past three decades. The announcement came as the Lottery Corp. surpassed $30 billion raised since its start, a portion of the proceeds paying for both pre-kindergarten and college.
“Since 1993, Georgia students from Pre-K to college have been set up for success through the programs funded by the lottery, expanding access to high-quality education in our state,” Kemp said in a statement. “We look forward to seeing that legacy of impact continue for years to come.”
On Wednesday, Gretchen Corbin, president and CEO of the Lottery Corp., said at a legislative hearing that the lottery returned $1.47 billion— a quarter of all proceeds — to education for the fiscal year that ended in July.
The money paid for HOPE and Zell Miller scholarships and also subsidized pre-kindergarten attendance, helping to drive enrollment in both.
Sonny Perdue, a former Republican Georgia governor and now the chancellor of the state university system, told lawmakers at a hearing last month that a record-breaking 382,000 enrolled this fall, surpassing projections of 379,500 by 2029.
“So, we are really beating the numbers,” Perdue said.
But the premise of Orrock’s committee is that Georgia could be enrolling even more students if they could afford college. Four-year college recipients of the Pell grant, a federal subsidy for students from low-income households, had an average $11,883 in unmet need in 2020, Orrock’s committee report said. That was a few thousand dollars more than the funding gap for all four-year students.
Kamore Campbell, who was a high school salutatorian, told the committee that he had received Pell and Zell funding, yet he still left the state for college.
“There were no public four-year schools that offered me enough aid to make staying in state affordable,” Campbell said. He had wanted to attend Georgia Southern University but had a $10,000 gap. “I enrolled at American University and left Georgia,” he said.
Ray Li, a lawyer with the Legal Defense Fund, a racial justice group, told the committee that Georgia is suffering a “brain drain” as talented students find better deals in other states and never return to contribute to Georgia’s economy.
Georgia has the lowest home state college attendance in the region, he said, with 78% of high school graduates staying here.
Compare that to 91% in Mississippi, 86% in Florida and 85% in South Carolina, he said. “We are losing a ton of students simply because they cannot afford to go to college here.”
