The jury took two days to reach its verdict.
Those forty-eight hours felt longer than I expected.
I had testified.
Caleb had testified.
The prosecution had presented financial records, documents, and accounts from witnesses.
The defense had challenged the evidence.
And the jurors had been instructed on the law.
Now the decision belonged to them.
I had no authority over it.
That was exactly how it should be.
Still, I found myself thinking about the case whenever my work grew quiet.
I thought about Terrence Holloway's tuition money.
Deacon Earl Simmons.
Rufus Tate.
The eleven parcels of land.
And Hattie Greene.
Especially Hattie.
Her story had stayed with me since the day I read Jaylen's letter.
I remembered the yellow paper.
The careful handwriting.
The request for someone to investigate.
I wondered what she would have thought of a courtroom full of people finally examining the circumstances of her death.
I hoped the process would bring her family some answers.
But I knew a verdict could not undo the loss.
I spent the first day of deliberations working in Atlanta.
I had hearings scheduled.
I kept them.
I reviewed documents.
I listened to arguments.
I signed orders.
My professional responsibilities did not stop because I cared about another case.
That distinction was important.
I was not the judge deciding Voss's guilt.
I was a witness.
And I had to respect the process even when waiting was uncomfortable.
That evening, Aunt Lorraine called.
She asked whether I had heard anything.
I told her the jury was still deliberating.
She sighed.
Then she asked whether they could take as long as they needed.
I said they could.
She was quiet for a moment.
Then she told me she had been thinking about Hattie.
She remembered an afternoon when the two of them had been preparing lessons for Sunday school.
Hattie had insisted that every child should be allowed to ask questions.
Even difficult ones.
Especially difficult ones.
Lorraine said Hattie believed children learned honesty by watching adults admit when they did not know an answer.
I smiled.
That sounded like the woman Lorraine had described.
I told her the jurors were doing their own difficult work.
They had to examine the evidence carefully.
They could not simply decide based on sympathy.
Lorraine understood.
But she still wanted the waiting to end.
So did I.
The following day, word came that the jury had reached a verdict.
I was in Atlanta.
I learned the result through the proper public proceedings.
For a moment, I sat without moving.
I knew what the charges were.
I knew the evidence I had personally given.
But hearing the decision was different.
The jury convicted Dalton Voss on every count except one.
The exception concerned theft of government property.
Prosecutors had alleged that money found in the locked gray cabinet came from government evidence.
The cabinet had contained $43,600 in cash.
But the government could not establish which bundles, if any, had originated in the evidence room.
That distinction mattered.
The money was suspicious.
Its location raised questions.
But suspicion was not enough to prove a particular charge beyond a reasonable doubt.
The jury had not convicted Voss of that offense.
I respected the decision.
I wanted the evidence to determine the result.
Not anger.
Not public pressure.
Not the fact that I had been injured.
A criminal conviction required proof.
Where the proof did not satisfy the jury, the defendant was entitled to an acquittal.
Even Dalton Voss.
The remaining verdicts were devastating for him.
The jury found him guilty of the civil rights offenses.
The verdicts included my arrest.
The incidents involving Earl Simmons and Rufus Tate.
And the charges connected to Hattie Greene's death.
The jurors also convicted him on the conspiracy and fraud offenses.
And on the obstruction charges concerning falsified reports.
I read the result twice.
Then I set the paper down.
For several minutes, I did nothing.
I had expected to feel satisfaction.
Perhaps even relief.
But my feelings were mixed.
I was grateful the allegations had been tested.
I was grateful the jury had examined the evidence.
I was grateful the process had not been controlled by the same sheriff whose conduct was under review.
But I was also thinking about how many people had suffered before that day arrived.
Hattie was dead.
Rufus Tate had lived through an arrest he should not have faced.
Terrence Holloway had lost money intended for his daughter's education.
Families had lost land.
And a young deputy had spent months frightened of the truth he kept in a notebook.
A verdict could establish responsibility.
It could not return the years people had lost.
Aunt Lorraine called soon afterward.
She had heard.
Her voice shook.
I asked whether she was all right.
She said she had been sitting with Hattie's photograph.
It was an old picture from Mount Zion.
The two women stood together after church.
Hattie was smiling.
Lorraine told me she had looked at that photograph while listening for news.
Then she began crying.
I let her.
There was nothing useful to add.
After a while, she said she wished Hattie had lived to hear the verdict.
I understood.
I wished that too.
We spoke about Jaylen.
He had been eighteen during the trial.
He was studying at Fort Valley State University.
His great-grandmother had raised him after his mother became ill.
He had written letters when adults seemed unwilling to listen.
And now a federal jury had heard evidence concerning her treatment in jail.
I hoped the verdict would mean something to him.
But I also knew it might reopen wounds.
Grief does not follow a courtroom schedule.
It changes.
It returns.
Sometimes it becomes sharper after a long-awaited decision.
The verdict was public.
So were the arguments that followed.
Some people described it as a victory.
Others continued defending Voss.
They claimed the case had been unfair.
They repeated allegations that I had influenced the investigation.
Those arguments had already been considered in court.
The earlier motion accusing me of engineering the arrest had been rejected.
The FBI investigation had begun before my visit.
The diner recording showed the encounter.
The records established the sequence.
I did not feel compelled to argue with every person who disagreed.
The verdict spoke for itself.
And the legal process was not finished.
Sentencing would come later.
The court still had to determine the appropriate punishment.
That required separate consideration.
A conviction did not automatically decide every consequence.
I knew that from my own work.
Sentencing involved the law, the proven offenses, and the circumstances of the case.
It also gave victims an opportunity to speak.
I thought about that part of the process.
I had described my injury in court.
The jury had heard about the fractured wrist.
They had seen the video.
But Hattie's family had lost far more than I had.
I had been released the same afternoon.
I had gone to the hospital.
Then I had returned to Lorraine's house.
Hattie never came home.
I tried not to compare suffering as though it were something that could be measured neatly.
Pain was not a competition.
But the difference mattered.
I could return to my work.
I could heal.
I could explain what happened.
Hattie's family could only speak about her in the past tense.
Four months passed between the verdict and sentencing.
During that time, I continued my ordinary life.
I worked in Atlanta.
I visited Lorraine when I could.
Her hip improved.
She began walking more confidently.
She still complained about physical therapy.
And she still mailed newspaper clippings.
Some concerned the trial.
Others concerned school events and church gatherings.
She had not lost the habit of sending me things she believed I should read.
One envelope contained a photograph of Hattie.
Lorraine had written a short note on the back.
She wanted me to remember her friend as she had been before the arrest.
I placed the photograph on my desk for a while.
Hattie was smiling.
She looked like someone who had a busy day ahead.
I thought about the sweet potato pies she used to make.
The Sunday school lessons.
The garden on her property.
The life that had existed before the sheriff's department entered it.
Those ordinary details mattered to me.
They reminded me that legal cases were built from events in people's lives.
People did not wake up hoping to become exhibits.
They wanted to work.
Raise children.
Attend church.
Pay bills.
Keep their homes.
Hattie had wanted to remain on her land.
Then everything changed.
When sentencing approached, I learned Jaylen Greene intended to speak.
I was not surprised.
He had been the one who wrote the original letter.
He had spent months asking people to listen.
He had traveled to the trial.
He had heard Caleb describe the medication requests.
Now he would have an opportunity to address the court directly.
I thought about the responsibility of listening to him.
I had heard victim statements many times as a judge.
Some were angry.
Some were quiet.
Some were carefully prepared.
Others came out in broken sentences.
There was no single correct way to speak about loss.
I hoped Jaylen would say what he needed to say.
Not what reporters wanted.
Not what lawyers expected.
What mattered to him.
On the morning of sentencing, I arrived at the courthouse in Macon.
The building was familiar now.
The dark paneling.
The seal behind the bench.
The rows of seats.
The same quiet movement of people waiting for proceedings to begin.
Dalton Voss entered without his sheriff's uniform.
I watched him take his place.
I did not know what he was thinking.
I did not pretend I did.
I only knew he was no longer the man controlling every room he entered.
He was a convicted defendant awaiting sentence.
The judge reviewed the case.
The legal issues.
The seriousness of the offenses.
The consequences for victims.
I listened.
I remembered the sheriff telling me that nobody would hear me complain.
Now a federal courtroom had spent days listening to evidence about his conduct.
The contrast was not lost on me.
But the moment did not feel like revenge.
It felt like the completion of a process that should have begun long before I entered the Magnolia Diner.
The judge imposed a sentence of seventeen years in federal prison.
I heard the number.
Seventeen.
It was longer than the years Voss had held power as sheriff.
I thought about the twelve years people in Pell County had lived under his authority.
I thought about the residents who had written to Aunt Lorraine.
And I thought about how many people had remained silent because they believed no one would protect them.
The sentence did not answer every question.
It did establish a consequence for the conduct the jury had found criminal.
The court also ordered financial penalties and restitution.
Terrence Holloway was to receive $8,400 for the money taken from his truck.
The $187,500 in kickback payments was ordered forfeited.
The cash recovered from the gray cabinet was also subject to forfeiture.
I listened carefully to the distinction between restitution and forfeiture.
The amounts mattered.
But they did not measure the full harm.
Holloway had been forced to worry about his daughter's education.
The money had been taken from a glove compartment during a traffic stop.
He had not received a proper receipt.
Now a federal court had ordered its return.
I hoped his daughter had been able to continue her education.
I did not know the details of her situation.
I only knew what the evidence established.
The judge then asked whether any victims wished to address the court.
I looked toward the gallery.
Jaylen Greene stood.
He was wearing a white button-down shirt.
I noticed the fold creases.
It looked as though the shirt had been carefully prepared for the occasion.
He held a sheet of yellow legal paper.
My chest tightened.
I remembered the letter he had written at seventeen.
The first paper on which I had seen Hattie's name.
Now he was walking toward the podium with another piece of yellow paper in his hands.
He unfolded it.
Smoothed it flat.
And looked toward the judge.
The courtroom waited.
I watched his fingers.
They were steady enough to hold the page.
But I could see how hard he was working to keep them that way.
He began by saying his great-grandmother's name.
Hattie Mae Greene.
Then he started telling the court who she had been.
Click here to continue reading: PART 11: Hattie Greene’s Great-Grandson Read His Yellow Letter in Court, and the Sentence Could Not Give Back What His Family Had Lost
I Went Into a Small Georgia Diner for Lunch, Never Expecting the Sheriff to Put Me in Handcuffs Before I Finished Eating
Part 10 of 15
