by Ty Tagami | Jun 16, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — The head of a multi-million-dollar drug trafficking and money laundering ring faces at least a decade in prison after pleading guilty to federal charges involving methamphetamine “conversion” laboratories.
Monica Dominguez Torres, 36, of Mexico, pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine and conspiracy to commit money laundering, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia announced Monday.
The agency said her organization operated labs that converted liquid methamphetamine from Mexico into hundreds of kilograms of crystal meth, some of it destined for sale in the Atlanta area.
“Dominguez’s elaborate criminal operation has been dismantled, and more than $3.5 million of illicit drug proceeds have been seized as a result of our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners’ diligent work,” U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg said.
When agents arrested Dominguez at her home in Conyers in February of last year, they found and seized more than $1.7 million in cash, five firearms and three vehicles, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Dominguez, who is scheduled for sentencing Sept. 15, led a criminal organization that laundered drug proceeds and sent the money to Mexico, the government said. Their methods included buying five residences, among them a seven-bedroom waterfront home in Jonesboro, most of them with cash. They also bought nine luxury vehicles worth about $780,000.
Dominguez also spent nearly $400,000 at Louis Vuitton and more than $425,000 at Burberry, over about four and a half years, the government said.
The investigation was conducted by numerous federal and state agencies plus the sheriff’s offices in Cobb and Paulding counties. It was part of a nationwide initiative targeting cartels and transnational criminal organizations.
In April, federal agencies in Atlanta announced 22 arrests involving two Mexican drug cartels and the seizure of more than 100 pounds of fentanyl. That was enough to kill every Georgian twice, Jae W. Chung, acting special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta division, said at the time.
Chung said after Dominguez’s guilty plea that she and her organization had been “removed from our streets,” adding, “this criminal organization had no regard for the destructive impact on our communities.”
The announcement included no information about Dominguez’s conspirators but said she faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years to life in prison for her trafficking conviction. The money laundering conviction carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
by Ty Tagami | Jun 13, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A botched FBI raid on a suburban Atlanta home has led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision against the government in a lawsuit brought by the victims.
In October 2017, a six-member SWAT team rammed the door of “a quiet family home” and tossed in a flash-bang grenade. The raiding party had relied on a GPS device to locate a suspected gang hideout, failing to notice the address on the mailbox. The agents had mistakenly entered the home of Hilliard Toi Cliatt, his partner Curtrina Martin, and her 7-year-old son Gabe.
They sued the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act, but the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta upheld a district judge’s decision in favor of the government, which had claimed sovereign immunity.
The Supreme Court’s decision Thursday revives the residents’ lawsuit, returning it to the courts in Atlanta.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the decision for the unanimous ruling, summed up the question at hand: “If federal officers raid the wrong house, causing property damage and assaulting innocent occupants, may the homeowners sue the government for damages? The answer is not as obvious as it might be.”
A tort is a wrongful act that causes harm or injury and is subject to monetary damages and other legal remedies. Sovereign immunity generally shields government from tort lawsuits, but that shield can be penetrated, sometimes in the case of “wrong-house” raids, Gorsuch wrote.
It is a complicated area of law, based on legal precedents that go back to the late 1800s with a sordid affair involving a former state supreme court justice in California who was shot dead by a federal marshal. The marshal, a former Tombstone, Ariz., police chief, was protecting a U.S. Supreme Court justice but was arrested by California authorities.
He convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to free him, the high court reasoning that allowing states to prosecute marshals for acts in the line of duty would “frustrate” federal law.
The 11th Circuit’s decision for the government reflected that history, but the U.S. Supreme Court justices concurred that the Atlanta circuit had issued an “outlier” opinion at odds with how most other courts have ruled on tort and sovereign immunity in such cases.
Georgia law allows a homeowner to sue a private person for damages in the event of a house raid and assault, and the high court determined that the 11th Circuit had improperly relied on cases such as that one from the 1800s, adding, “the 11th Circuit did not identify any federal statute or constitutional provision displacing Georgia tort law.”
The Institute for Justice, which represented the plaintiffs, said the decision explains that federal tort law “allows people to sue the federal government when its agents violate individual rights — intentionally or by accident.”
by Ty Tagami | Jun 12, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Some Georgia lawmakers have been trying for years without success to raise Georgia’s tax on cigarettes, but some think cuts at the federal level may finally stir interest in their cause.
State Rep. Michelle Au, D-Johns Creek, said she’s been trying for five years to get the Republican-led Georgia House of Representatives interested in a study committee on the issue, and leadership finally relented.
The House Study Committee on the Costs and Effects of Smoking met for the first time Thursday. Members heard from smoking cessation advocates, including the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, American Lung Society and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
They learned that, yes, cigarettes are still extraordinarily harmful to health — and that raising the cigarette tax would both discourage smoking and help to pay for the health consequences for those who keep smoking.
There are at least 7,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke, said Danna Thompson, a regional director of advocacy for the American Lung Association, and 69 of them are known to cause cancer.
Nine out of 10 lung cancer deaths are due to smoking, which also is known to cause obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema, chronic bronchitis and coronary heart disease, among others, she said.
“Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body,” Thompson said.
The lawmakers also learned about the financial impact for everyone, due to rising health care costs and reduced productivity at work when smokers get sick.
Experts said Georgia is spending hundreds of millions more on Medicaid for people sickened by smoking than it gets from the cigarette tax.
Only Missouri charges a lower tax than Georgia for a pack of 20 cigarettes, said Andrew Lord, a lobbyist for the Georgia Society of Clinical Oncology. Georgia’s tax is 37 cents a pack, Lord said, adding that raising it to $1.37 would generate between $400 million and $500 million.
That still wouldn’t close the gap on medical costs, according to Danny Kanso, senior fiscal analyst with the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute.
The cigarette tax currently generates about $115 million a year, and Georgia is spending about $850 million a year on Medicaid costs attributable to smoking, he said.
Kanso added that Georgia has plenty of room to raise the tax. New York state has the highest tax, at $5.35 per pack.
Au, a medical doctor, is leading the charge for a tax increase, which is a dubious prospect in a legislature led by Republicans who generally oppose taxes.
However, she has some GOP allies. A handful of Republican senators signed a 2019 resolution encouraging the House, which writes the budget, to raise the cigarette tax to at least the national average to help offset indigent health care costs.
And Au has three Republican signatures on House Bill 83, introduced this year, to raise the tax to 57 cents per pack. She said in an interview that federal budget cuts may be undermining the traditional GOP opposition to tax hikes.
The easiest way to kill a bill is to ignore it, she said, so the approval of the study committee is a sign of receptiveness to her idea.
“The fact that they’re letting us talk about it … shows a level of investment and interest that we did not have before,” Au said.
Federal cuts are already having an impact.
The Georgia Department of Public Health confirmed that it eliminated its Tobacco Use Prevention Program last month due to federal cuts. However, a spokeswoman said “core” tobacco and vaping prevention and cessation programs, including the Tobacco-Free Schools and the Georgia Tobacco Quitline, were still operating.
Courtlandt Fouche, the former director of the program, said the loss of $2 million from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention far outweighs the $750,000 the state directed to the program from the national tobacco lawsuit settlement fund.
Fouche said he and his four managers were let go. One handled youth prevention, another cessation in general, another second-hand smoke exposure and the fourth program evaluations.
Their outreach to children, adults and local public health districts helped hundreds, even thousands, quit smoking, he said, adding, now, those relationships are “completely lost.”
by Ty Tagami | Jun 11, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — The University System of Georgia Board of Regents held a final vote Wednesday to confirm Christopher “Mike” Johnson as president of the University of West Georgia.
The chief of staff for the University of Houston (UH) and the UH system will succeed the Carrollton university’s interim President, Ashwani Monga, on Aug. 1.
Monga will return to his permanent role as the university system’s executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer.
The Regents had already voted in late May to name Johnson the sole finalist for president after a seven-month national search.
System Chancellor Sonny Perdue said the vote marked “an exciting new chapter” for the university, home to 14,400 students, with more than 100 undergraduate and graduate programs and with classes beyond the Carrollton campus, in Douglasville and Newnan.
“It’s a true honor to be named president of the University of West Georgia, and I’m grateful to Chancellor Perdue and the Board of Regents for their trust in me,” Johnson said.
The U.S. Marine Corps veteran holds a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from The Citadel, a master’s degree in higher education from George Mason University, and a doctorate in higher education leadership and policy from the University of Houston’s College of Education.
Johnson previously served as director of development for military programs at Purdue University, where he helped secure over $40 million in gifts, a statement from the Regents’ office said. He also worked with the UH system, state legislators, faculty and others to help secure over $20 million toward establishment of a college of medicine there.
by Ty Tagami | Jun 11, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
UPDATE: this article now includes comment from one of the companies that was sued
ATLANTA – When Regina Brinson reached the middle of the aluminum walkway, she heard it crack and watched in horror as it broke just in front of her feet, plunging the elderly people ahead of her into the fast-moving water.
Soon, her portion of the gangway to the Sapelo Island ferry was in the water, too, and the current was carrying her downstream.
Brinson described her experience of the Oct. 19 tragedy that killed seven people during a news conference Wednesday. Her attorney, well-known civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, called the conference to announce his firm was filing a “multimillion-dollar” lawsuit against the companies involved in designing, engineering and building the gangway in 2022.
Dozens were reportedly on it that afternoon, preparing to take a ferry operated by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources from the Marsh Landing Dock back to the mainland when the 80-foot structure buckled and collapsed.
“When people put profit over safety, you have the traumatic loss like she and her cousin Jeff Thomas had,” Crump said at the gathering outside the visitor center of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Historical Park.
Thomas’ father, Brinson’s uncle, died that day.
The setting for the news conference was deliberate because Crump’s clients — 30 people who were injured or related to four of the dead — are descendants of West Africans who were enslaved on that barrier island. The tragedy unfolded during their annual Sapelo Cultural Day, a celebration of the island’s historic Gullah Geechee community.
“I wonder, honestly, if this case would have gotten more attention if it were all elderly white people,” Crump said, adding, “Black tears are just as valuable as white tears.”
Crump, who has offices in Decatur and in seven other cities across the country, has won clients millions of dollars in high-profile, race-related lawsuits. Among those he has represented are the families of Ahmaud Arberry, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
Brinson held a crumpled tissue in her right hand, her eyes red, as she recounted the worst part of her story. While floating downstream, she spotted her uncle Isaiah Thomas in the water next to her. She told him to grab her hand, and he did. But he also clutched at her collar, dragging her beneath the surface.
Brinson, who said she cannot swim, said God told her what she had to do next: go up for air!
“I’m underwater, peeling finger by finger by finger off my shirt, having to release my uncle,” she said. Once free, she broke for the surface, then saw him float by. She was distraught as she dog paddled toward shore, thinking, “Oh my God, what did I do?”
Crump said she did nothing wrong, that the companies responsible for the gangway forced her to choose survival.
In addition to Thomas’ family, Crump’s lawyers are representing the families of Jacqueline Crews Carter, Cynthia Gibbs, and Carlotta McIntosh, who also died that day.
Crump said the lawsuit only targets companies responsible for the gangway. So far, he said, the state of Georgia is not a defendant.
Collaborating attorney Jeffrey Goodman, a Philadelphia lawyer known for handling product liability and structural collapse cases, said the gangway should have been able to support 100 pounds per square foot but was instead designed to hold less than a third of that.
The suit was filed Tuesday in Gwinnett County. Goodman said that venue was chosen because Gwinnett is the base of one of the defendants, Centennial Contractors Enterprises, which he characterized as “right in the middle of what went wrong.”
Centennial said in a statement that the company doesn’t comment on pending legal proceedings but said the “underlying facts” of this case were still being investigated.
“Our deepest sympathies are with those who lost loved ones or were injured,” Centennial said.
Other lawyers are representing survivors of the other three who died that day — William Johnson, Jr., Queen Welch and Charles Houston — as part of the same lawsuit.
Houston’s daughter, Heather Houston-Meeks, is represented by the national injury law firm Morgan & Morgan, which said she was on the gangway with her father when it broke.
The firm previously represented four victims of a 2022 incident in which a boat ramp in St. Marys 75 miles south of Sapelo Island collapsed, injuring several people.
