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Factoids author files suit

• An Albany medical official is heading back to court, this time in a suit against Dougherty County’s chief prosecutor.

J.D. Sumner

ALBANY — The author of the Phoebe Factoids says he hopes that a lawsuit he has filed against the Dougherty County district attorney and investigators will be the final chapter in an ongoing battle to reclaim his tarnished name, Charles Rehberg’s attorney says.

Rehberg filed suit in U.S. District Court against District Attorney Ken Hodges, investigator James Paulk and special prosecutor Kelly Burke, contending that the three conspired to infringe on his constitutional rights after his lawyer says he was unjustly indicted on three different occasions.

According to court documents filed Tuesday, Rehberg contends that Paulk, Hodges and Burke abused their powers and offices to investigate him “with malice and without probable cause,” violated his privacy by disclosing subpoenaed information to private citizens for money, and caused him to be portrayed in a false light that damaged his personal and professional reputation.

Rehberg, administrator of Albany Surgical PC, and Dr. John Bagnato, a partner in the medical firm, were the anonymous authors of the Phoebe Factoids, faxes critical of Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital’s administration that were distributed between December 2003 and March 2004.

Those faxes sparked an investigation by officials with the hospital and its parent company, Phoebe Health System, and a Dougherty County grand jury probe. The result was a civil suit and criminal indictments against Rehberg and Bagnato that were later withdrawn, and a civil countersuit by Rehberg against Phoebe that was settled in December. In all, the legal processes went on for about two years.

Some of the information gleaned from the grand jury investigation was shared with Phoebe officials.

Rehberg’s attorney, Bryan Vroon, said Wednesday that Rehberg was the victim of an unjust investigation that yielded three grand jury indictments that were later overturned.

The suit asks for a jury trial and, if successful, the awarding of compensatory and punitive damages. But Vroon said that the most important outcome of this suit would be vindication for Rehburg and his shattered name.

“It’s difficult to quantify the impact on Mr. Rehberg’s life by being unjustly indicted three times,” Vroon said.

Hodges said that he was unaware of the filing until late Wednesday afternoon when members of the media began calling his office.

“It’s a meritless lawsuit that I’ll refer to the Attorney General’s office for defense,” Hodges said. “I expect it will drag on in court for a while and I expect it will ultimately resolve itself in our favor.”

Hodges said that the Attorney General’s Office will have to represent him while the county attorney will represent Paulk. Hodges also said that he doesn’t expect the lawsuit to amount to anything more than a minor inconvenience to his office.

“It will not deter this office from doing what it needs to do,” Hodges said.

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Program helps cut costs

• The Partnership for Prescription Assistance helps to educate low-income, uninsured, or underinsured patients about how to cut their prescription costs.

Joshua Brown

ALBANY — Residents in need of prescription assistance had a chance to hop aboard the “Help is Here Express” Wednesday morning.

The giant bus stopped at First Baptist Church of Albany to provide an opportunity for area residents to find help in obtaining their prescriptions for less, said spokesman Jeff Trewhitt of the Partnership for Prescription Assistance.

The Partnership for Prescription Assistance, sponsored by the nation’s pharmaceutical research companies, helps to educate low-income, uninsured, or underinsured patients about how to cut their prescription costs, and then offers them the chance to look at and enroll in more than 475 public and private patient assistance programs, Trewhitt said.

“It is a concerted nationwide educational effort to make sure that patients around the country find out about these 475 programs,” Trewhitt said. “It’s a door to all of those programs.

“We’re basically the intelligence organization for (people). We pin down whether or not they are qualified to enroll in a program.”

The “Help is Here Express” bus carries several computers with Internet access to the partnership’s Web site, http:// www.pparx.org

Trained specialists aboard the bus help walk a person through the site to find programs that they are eligible for, Trewhitt said. Once the person has found programs he or she is eligible for, that person can then contact the program provider to see about enrolling in the program.

Albany resident David Spencer said that he had found four programs that might help him with his nearly $300-a- month prescription costs.

“I came out here to try to get a discount on my medications,” Spencer said. “They gave me at least four programs I could call so I could see about getting a discount.

“I would tell people to swallow their pride and come out here. There’s nothing to lose.”

People can also call the partnership at (888) 477-2669 to find programs they are eligible for, Trewhitt said. Callers should be ready to answer confidential questions about income, residency and insurance coverage, among others. The process takes about 15 minutes, Trewhitt said.

About 75 percent of those who have used the Partnership for Prescription Assistance have enrolled in cost- cutting prescription programs since the partnership’s launch in April 2005. Since then, the partnership has helped more than 160,000 Georgians, Trewhitt said.

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D.A. says case done

• A Lowndes County District Attorney says the investigation into the shooting death of Willie Banks by a Moultrie Police office is officially over.

J.D. Sumner

MOULTRIE — A Lowndes County District Attorney is closing the investigation into the November shooting death of a Moultrie man by a Moultrie Police officer, saying that the death was “tragic but justifiable.”

Willie Banks was shot three times by Moultrie Police Sgt. Bruce Hamm on November 16 during the serving of a warrant. After an extensive investigation by the GBI and the district attorney’s office, District Attorney David Miller of the South Georgia Judicial Circuit ruled Tuesday that the use of deadly force was justified.

According to documents released by Miller’s office Wednesday, Banks had a history of mental illness and violence that included an attack on a bail bondsman last November.

Nine days later, Hamm saw Banks, whom he knew, and confirmed that there was an outstanding felony warrant on him.

According to the statement, Banks refused to drop a hunting knife despite repeated verbal requests from police. Hamm fired three times on Banks after he saw Banks turn towards to other police officers with the knife.

Hamm was placed on administrative leave during the investigation. Calls to confirm Hamm’s return to active duty Wednesday went unanswered at the Moultrie Police Department.

“The shooting death of Mr. Banks, while indeed tragic and unfortunate, was justified under the law,” Miller wrote. “I am therefore closing my file.”

In the letter, Miller said that he informed the Banks family of his decision and showed them a surveillance tape of the shooting. He writes that after showing the family the tape, they left his office immediately before he could explain his findings or his decision.

The NAACP held a rally in December to push for a probe in the shooting.

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School officials mull textbook supplements

• More school systems and students are having to rely on Web-based educational materials in order to keep up with the rapidly changing times.

Barbara Rivera Holmes

ALBANY — State-issued textbooks can become outdated or not match the local curriculum. To better prepare its students, Dougherty officials have placed an emphasis on secondary educational resources.

Some students don’t have a textbook for every subject, in part because of a shortage, said Dianne Daniels, executive director of curriculum and instruction for the Dougherty County School System.

Instead, students may have to receive supplemental resources or Web addresses that contain up-to-date, relevant information for what’s being taught in public Dougherty County classrooms. Still, it’s tough for some parents to get beyond the fact that their child may not have a book.

“textbooks are strictly a resource. ... The textbook is not the curriculum,” Daniels said Wednesday during a presentation to the Dougherty County Board of Education. It was a point she stressed to board members numerous times during the noon working session.

“We’re trying to get that message out, but it will still take some time,” she said.

Daniels noted that textbook companies offer online versions of their hardback books, so students that do not have individual copies have e-access to the books.

The Georgia Board of Education has a seven-year adoption cycle for school books, so basically, books are good for seven years.

That might work for subjects such as language arts, but it’s not ideal for the maths or sciences, especially, Daniels said.

“It’s a challenge because math is changing,” she said. New mathematics textbooks were adopted in 2006.

School systems, she said, don’t have to adopt the texts, but they do have a responsibility to provide students with adequate materials for learning.

Daniels said it’s a challenge faced by school systems throughout the nation.

In Daniels’ update, which made up the bulk of the meeting, held at Jackson Heights Elementary School, she briefed School Board members on the modified school day for high schools.

The modified day, which has been implemented at all the high schools except for Westover High School, allows the system to slip in extra-help time for students who need it.

The day wasn’t extended, but simply divided up differently, with a “zero hour” and “seventh hour” and a modified third-hour hour.

Asked by board members why Westover had not adopted the new day, Daniels and DCSS Superintendent Sally Whatley explained that the schools were given the option of accepting a “safety net model” such the modified day or creating their own. Westover officials chose to create a plan that better fit its student population, Whatley and Daniels said.

Board member Willie C. Weaver asked school board attorney Tommy Coleman to check if the board can impose “mandatory remediation,” such as after school programs and Saturday, on students.

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Retired educator teaches students about past

• An Albany native, Mary Royal Jenkins, is giving students a lesson on the Albany Civil Rights Movement of 1961-1962.

Barbara Rivera Holmes

ALBANY — Mary Royal Jenkins remembers having to drink from water fountains labeled “coloreds.” She remembers having to go into the movie theater through a separate entrance and having to sit in the balcony. And she remembers having to order restaurant food from the take-out/ drive-thru window because, as a black person, she wasn’t allowed in the building.

Jenkins, who spoke Wednesday to Southside Middle School eight-graders about the Albany Civil Rights Movement, said she hopes young people remember the struggles that led to freedom.

“No matter how bad history is, it should be remembered and recorded,” said Jenkins, a former Southside teacher who wrote “Open Dem Cells: A pictorial history of the Albany movement.” The title of the book is based on a song, she said.

The Albany native, who would not reveal her age, was one of hundreds of blacks and whites involved with the local movement for civil liberties. Some historians say that the Albany movement paved the way for the large-scale movement in Birmingham, Ala.

“These were people that made a sacrifice for you and what they endured is not something that we laugh at,” she told the students, who were mostly attentive while she spoke.

Jenkins said she’s “really not too sure that they (young people) do (remember) and understand” the sacrifices she spoke about Wednesday.

The author said she took notes during all the meetings and speeches she went to in the ’60s. She wrote down details of her experience.

In 2000, she achieved a lifelong dream of becoming a published writer after Columbus- based Brentwood Academic Press published her 111-page book, now in its third printing. There 1,500 of her books in print, Jenkins said.

Jenkins’ granddaughter, 14- year-old Katie Jenkins, was among the students who gathered in the school gym for the presentation.

The eighth-grader said she was proud of her grandmother’s involvement in the movement and of her determination to write the book. Though Katie has heard her grandmother talk about the Albany movement before, even she picked up on something new Wednesday.

“I learned we had our own Rosa Parks, and I didn’t know that,” said Katie, 13. Earlier, Jenkins had noted that in the ’60s, an 18-year-old student at then Albany State College had refused to move after sitting in the whites-only section of a public bus.

Asked by one student what she thought of meeting civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., who was once arrested in Albany, Jenkins said she was “impressed.”

“When you are in the moment, you don’t realize the greatness of someone,” she said. “But he was a great person who was always interested in (your) opinions.

“I was very impressed (then),” she said, “but was even more so in later years.”

Before leaving Southside, Jenkins encouraged the students to pursue their dreams and to help better the society they live in.

“Each generation must contribute toward the improvement of life for all people,” she said. “Remember, all the great books have not been written. All the great songs have not been composed ... and all the wrongs have not been made right.

“There are still dreams undreamt, and mountains to climb.”

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Justice says pay raise needed

• Georgia’s chief justice says it’s time to raise salaries for the state’s judges.

Dave Williams

ATLANTA — Georgia Chief Justice Leah Sears endorsed a judicial pay raise Wednesday, the same day a House Republican leader introduced legislation increasing salaries for Supreme Court, Court of Appeals and Superior Court judges.

“Fortuitous timing, wouldn’t you say?” Rep. Wendell Willard, R-Atlanta, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, quipped after Sears delivered her annual State of the Judiciary address to a joint session of the General Assembly.

In a wide-ranging 26-minute speech, Sears pitched judicial raises as part of an overdue need for an overall increase in funding for Georgia’s judiciary.

She said judges’ salaries haven’t been raised since 1999, other than cost-of-living adjustments.

“For the past several years, our judicial system has responded to the increasing demands placed upon it with little more than the same number of employees receiving little more than the same level of compensation,” she said.

“We have sought increases only when we convinced they were vital to our mission.”

Willard served on a state commission that met during the last two years to consider whether Georgia’s judicial salaries should be raised to attract and keep quality judges.

He said the panel’s conclusion was an emphatic “yes.”

Willard cited several examples of good judges who have left the bench to return to private legal practice because they weren’t making enough money to support their growing families.

His bill would raise the annual salaries of state Supreme Court justices to $194,808, while judges on the Georgia Court of Appeals would be paid $193,651 a year.

Under the last judicial salary bill approved by the Legislature, several cost-of-living increases ago, members of the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals were earning just less than $140,000.

Willard’s bill also would increase annual pay for Superior Court judges to just more than $140,000, up from about $100,000 a year under the previous legislation.

Overall, Sears asked lawmakers to support a 6 percent increase in the judiciary’s budget for the fiscal year that starts in July.

On other issues, the chief justice didn’t address directly proposals floated by some Republican leaders since last fall’s elections to add two justices to the seven-member Supreme Court and make judicial elections partisan. Judges in Georgia do not run for office under party labels.

Some GOP insiders, including Gov. Sonny Perdue, backed challenger Mike Wiggins’ failed bid last fall to unseat Justice Carol Hunstein, a campaign in which he contended that she was too liberal for Georgia voters.

Sears beat back an effort based on a similar theme in 2004 to win re-election.

Last month, Sears rejected both ideas for change at a legislative conference in Athens and suggested that lawmakers leave the courts alone.

On Wednesday, she made a more veiled plea to the Legislature to support a judiciary that is independent from influence by the executive or legislative branches of government.

“Fortunately, the people of Georgia seem to cherish the wisdom of this separation of powers,” she said. “It is fundamental. It is compelling. It is not negotiable. And it is nonpartisan.”

Sears made no mention, direct or otherwise, of the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council’s request for a budget increase to cover its activities for the rest of the current fiscal year.

Council Executive Director Michael Mears has told legislative budget writers the agency is running low on cash, in part because of unanticipated costs involved in the case of Brian Nichols, the accused Fulton County Courthouse gunman.

“That’s too complex to get into,” Sears told reporters after her speech.

She said it will be up to council officials to make their case with lawmakers.

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Incentives added for mile fun run

• Students who register for a one-mile run at a March marathon could go home with a free bike.

Barbara Rivera Holmes

MARATHON COSTS Registration fees are through Feb. 1. Runners and walkers must pre-register, as there is no day-of registration. Full marathon: $65 Half-marathon: $45 Fun run: $15 For more details, to register for any of the events or to volunteer, visit www.snickersmarathonenergy barmarathon.com or call (229) 434-8700.

ALBANY — Students at Southside Middle School helped Albany officials Tuesday announce the details of a one-mile fun run at Albany’s Snickers Marathon Energy Bar Marathon in March.

With pop music blaring, the seventh-grade physical education students did step aerobics, danced and jogged in the school gym.

As a way to encourage youths to participate in the one-mile run, marathon organizers and sponsors presented students with a series of incentives.

First, $1 will be donated to schools for every fun-run registration. During the registration, participants — grandparents, students, friends, anyone, officials said — can designate what school they would like the dollar to go to. The school that has the most registrations will receive a trophy. The registration funds will go to the schools listed on the registration forms regardless of which school wins the trophy, said organizer Sara Underdown, vice president of the Albany Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.

Second, by registering for the fun run, students are entered in a raffle. Among the raffle prizes are 50 bicycles, which are being donated by the Youth Becoming Healthy (YBH) program.

Southside Middle was chosen as the announcement site because of its emphasis on student physical activity, Underdown said Tuesday.

Students take PE twice a week, on Mondays and Tuesdays. On Fridays, Eddie McBride, with Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital’s Network of Trust, comes out to the school and directs the students through a series of health stations.

Shabreka Hosley, 13, said all the physical activity “helps me to have a lot of energy and helps me to be healthy.” The seventh-grader and her peers glistened as they danced Tuesday.

The Snickers Marathon, to be held March 2-4, includes a 26.2-mile run; 13.1 mile half marathon; one-mile fun run; and bike race. The event is a prequalifier for the prestigious Boston Marathon in April.

In the United States, about 15 percent of children and adolescents are obese, resulting in numerous health problems including childhood onset of type II diabetes.

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Army gun fires 'fire'

• A new military ray gun fires a harmless beam that makes the target feel as if on fire.

Elliott Minor
The Associated Press

MOODY AIR FORCE BASE – The military calls its new weapon an "active denial system," but that's an understatement. It's a ray gun that shoots a beam that makes people feel as if they are about to catch fire.

Apart from causing that terrifying sensation, the technology is supposed to be harmless – a non-lethal way to get enemies to drop their weapons.

Military officials say it could save the lives of innocent civilians and service members in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The weapon is not expected to go into production until at least 2010, but all branches of the military have expressed interest in it, officials said.

During the first media demonstration of the weapon Wednesday, airmen fired beams from a large dish antenna mounted atop a Humvee at people pretending to be rioters and acting out other scenarios that U.S. troops might encounter in war zones.

The device's two-man crew located their targets through powerful lenses and fired beams from ore than 500 yards away. That is nearly 17 times the range of existing non-lethal weapons, such as rubber bullets.

Anyone hit by the beam immediately jumped out of its path because of the sudden blast of heat throughout the body. While the 130-degree heat was not painful, it was intense enough to make the participants think that their clothes were about to ignite.

"This is one of the key technologies for the future," said Marine Col. Kirk Hynes, director of the non-lethal weapons program at Quantico, Va., which helped develop the new weapon. "Non-lethal weapons are important for the escalation of force, especially in the environments our forces are operating in."

The system uses electro-magnetic millimeter waves, which can penetrate only 1/64th of an inch of skin, just enough to cause discomfort. By comparison, microwaves used in the common kitchen appliance penetrate several inches of flesh.

The millimeter waves cannot go through walls, but they can penetrate most clothing, officials said. The refused to comment on whether the waves can go through glass.

The weapon could be mounted aboard ships, airplanes and helicopters, and routinely used for security of anti-terrorism operations.

"There should be no collateral damage to this," sand Senior Airman Adam Navin, 22, of Green Bay, Wis., who has served several tours in Iraq.

Navin and two other airmen were role players in Wednesday's demonstration. They and 10 reporters who volunteered were shot with the beams. The beams easily penetrated various layers of winter clothing.

The system was developed by the military, but the two devices currently being evaluated were built by defense contractor Raytheon.

Airman Blaine Pernell, 22, of suburban New Orleans, said he could have used the system during his four tours in Iraq, where he manned watchtowers around a base near Kirkuk. He said Iraqis constantly pulled up and faked car problems so they could scout out U.S. forces.

"All we could do is watch them," he said. But if they had the ray gun, troops "could have dispersed them."

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