Georgia Law Blog

People in Georgia who have been wrongly convicted may be among those who lost a combined 1,600 years of life to incarceration in 2018 according to a study by the National Registry of Exonerations. The 151 people released in 2018 after they had been wrongfully convicted had been in prison an average of 11 years each.

In nearly half of the exonerations in 2018, the crimes for which they were convicted did not even happen. This was the case in a number of convictions in Chicago that were thrown out after a large-scale protection racket among law enforcement was discovered in which drugs were planted on people who did not pay demanded extortions. Official misconduct was an element in more than 100 of the exonerations in 2018 and in 80% of the homicide cases. In one case, in which a man was released from death row for the rape and murder of a child, experts found that there had not been sexual assault and that the child may have died from being hit by a car.

A divorcing parent in Georgia may seek to get custody of their children after the end of their marriage. They can seek legal custody, which gives control over the decisions about a child's religion, health care, education and other parts of their welfare. There is also residential/physical custody, which relates to where a child will spend most of their time.

For most of the 20th century, fathers who sought to obtain shared child custody after a divorce were likely to be disappointed. This is because the family courts tended to rule in the favor of the mothers, who were typically granted sole custody. However, for the last 30 years, there has been a significant change in the way the courts have been awarding child custody. Judges have been favoring mutual agreements in which shared custody is included.

A retailer in Georgia could know if an individual was caught shoplifting at a store down the street or across the country. This is because facial recognition software can take a picture of a person's face and distribute it in a short period of time. While this may be helpful to those who own a business, it may not be beneficial for those who want to retain their privacy.

One of the main concerns is that there is no guideline for how accurate the software must be. This means that it could mistakenly take a picture of an individual who was merely a bystander during a burglary and declare that person to be the culprit. Another issue that has been raised is the fact that these programs are trained using pictures uploaded to social media sites without the permission of those who are in the photographs.

Perhaps no other entity is as severely challenged as a government agency when it comes to disputes concerning legalities and liabilities.

For starters, and as duly noted in one online overview of municipal law governance and representation, the terrain is broad. It covers “a wide range of issues, including everything from police, zoning, education policies and property taxes.”