The land cases took another eighteen months.
That was the part many people did not understand.
They had watched the criminal trial.
They had heard the verdict.
They knew Dalton Voss had been sentenced to seventeen years in federal prison.
They expected the property problems to end immediately.
I wished it worked that way.
But criminal punishment and property restoration were separate matters.
The court had established guilt.
The families still needed legal remedies.
Eleven parcels of land were involved.
Roughly 640 acres.
Some had been acquired through tax deed sales.
Others through estate transactions.
Each property had its own records.
Its own history.
Its own family.
And its own complications.
I followed the public developments while continuing my work in Atlanta.
I was not involved in deciding the cases.
That boundary remained important.
But I wanted to know what happened to the families.
The lawyers representing them worked through the evidence gathered during the federal investigation.
They examined county records.
Tax notices.
Deeds.
Sale documents.
And information concerning Pinecrest Holdings.
The criminal convictions were significant.
They supported the argument that the transactions had been connected to fraudulent conduct.
But the civil attorneys still had to show what relief each family was entitled to receive.
Some notices had been deliberately sent to incorrect addresses.
That mattered because property owners were supposed to receive proper notice before losing land through tax proceedings.
If the notice process had been corrupted, the resulting sale could be challenged.
Other transactions involved estate property.
Those required different evidence.
The attorneys examined whether the purchases had been obtained through fraud.
They also had to determine whether the land remained in Pinecrest's possession.
I thought about those records often.
A document could look ordinary.
A name.
A date.
A parcel number.
A signature.
But behind each page was a family.
A home.
A place people remembered.
The first time Aunt Lorraine told me the county was considering a settlement, I tried not to sound too hopeful.
I knew negotiations could fail.
I knew property disputes could become complicated.
And I did not want to promise her something the court had not yet approved.
She understood.
At least she said she did.
Then she called me again two days later to ask whether I had heard more.
That was Lorraine.
Patient with children.
Less patient with injustice.
I told her the lawyers needed time.
She sighed.
Then she said Hattie would have been tired of waiting.
I could not disagree.
The county attorney reviewed the evidence.
The criminal convictions had changed the legal position of Pell County.
The records concerning the property transactions were extensive.
The allegations were no longer simply complaints made by residents.
They had been examined in federal proceedings.
And serious misconduct had been established.
Eventually, the county attorney recommended settlement.
The county commission agreed to address the tax deed sales where notices had been fraudulently misdirected.
That decision mattered.
It meant the families would not have to continue fighting every issue through years of separate trials.
The settlement also addressed the estate transactions challenged as fraudulent.
I read the terms carefully.
Nine of the eleven parcels were to be returned to the original families or their heirs.
Nine.
I sat at my desk and repeated the number quietly.
Nine families would regain property they had lost.
Some parcels had remained in Pinecrest's control.
Others could be restored through the legal process.
I thought about the people who had spent months looking at land they no longer legally owned.
Now the records would be corrected.
The families could begin rebuilding their connections to those places.
But two parcels could not be returned.
Pinecrest had sold them to third parties.
Those buyers had not known about the fraud.
The settlement recognized that complication.
Instead of returning those properties, Pell County agreed to pay compensation based on their current appraised value.
The total compensation for those two parcels was $1.94 million.
I considered what that meant.
Money could help a family recover financially.
It could pay debts.
Support children.
Replace some of what had been lost.
But money could not always replace a particular piece of land.
Not when generations of memories were attached to it.
Still, the settlement provided meaningful relief.
The families would not be left with nothing.
A court-appointed receiver also handled Pinecrest Holdings' remaining assets.
Those assets were liquidated.
The proceeds were directed toward restitution.
I read that part with particular attention.
The company had been used in transactions the criminal case exposed.
Now its remaining value would help address the harm.
It was not a perfect solution.
There was no perfect solution.
But it was accountability beyond the prison sentence.
Then came the news Aunt Lorraine had been waiting for.
Hattie Greene's forty-two acres on Cypress Creek Road were being returned to her estate.
I read the notice slowly.
I wanted to be certain.
The property had been acquired by Pinecrest after Hattie's death.
The family had challenged that transaction.
Now the settlement would restore ownership to the estate.
Hattie's grandson Marcus would administer it.
He was Jaylen's uncle.
The land would return to the family.
I sat quietly for a long time.
I remembered Hattie standing on her porch in Caleb's testimony.
Eighty-one years old.
Crying.
Telling surveyors to leave.
I remembered the arrest.
The jail.
The medication requests.
And the final hospital transfer.
I thought about the land she had tried to protect.
Now her descendants would have it again.
I called Lorraine.
She answered after several rings.
I asked whether she was sitting down.
She became worried immediately.
I told her it was good news.
Then I explained.
Hattie's property was being returned.
For a moment, Lorraine said nothing.
I could hear her breathing.
Then she began crying.
Not loudly.
Just the quiet crying of someone who had carried grief for a long time.
She said Hattie had loved that land.
She spoke about the farmhouse.
The garden.
The road leading toward Cypress Creek.
She remembered visiting when they were younger.
She remembered church gatherings.
And the sweet potato pies Hattie brought in covered dishes.
I listened.
Then Lorraine said she wished she could tell her friend.
I understood.
There are victories that arrive after the person who needed them is gone.
They still matter.
But they carry a sadness that never quite disappears.
The restoration of the land also changed the situation with Georgia Power.
Before the settlement, the company had offered Pinecrest $238,000 for an easement across fifteen acres.
The property was now returning to Hattie's estate.
Georgia Power renegotiated the easement with the family.
The final payment was $251,000.
That money was held in trust for Hattie's descendants.
I remember looking at the number.
It was not just compensation for land use.
It meant the family would receive value from property that had been taken from them.
The money would benefit Hattie's relatives instead of the company connected to the sheriff's corruption.
Jaylen Greene's college tuition was paid from that trust.
All four years.
At Fort Valley State University.
When I learned that, I thought about Hattie teaching him to read.
The Bible.
The newspaper.
The belief that education helped children understand their responsibilities.
Now the land she had protected would help pay for his education.
There was something deeply fitting about that.
I did not know whether Jaylen thought of it the same way.
I did not ask.
But I hoped the arrangement would give him room to study without constantly worrying about money.
He had already spent too much of his youth dealing with loss.
The property settlement was not the only civil remedy.
Other victims of the sheriff's conduct had filed civil rights claims.
Those cases addressed arrests and other harms.
Some settlements were reached with Pell County.
Deacon Earl Simmons received $185,000.
I remembered his arrest.
He had questioned the search of his son.
He had been charged with obstruction.
The charge was dismissed eleven days later.
But the arrest had still affected his life.
The settlement recognized that harm.
Rufus Tate's claim was also resolved.
He had been seventy-one when the sheriff accused him of resisting.
Caleb's notebook said he had not resisted.
He had been using a cane.
Sadly, Rufus died of natural causes before the criminal trial.
His estate pursued the claim.
The settlement amounted to $140,000.
The money went to his granddaughter.
I thought about how she must have felt.
The case had established important facts.
But her grandfather was no longer alive to hear the outcome.
Again, relief had arrived too late for the person most directly harmed.
Terrence Holloway also received compensation.
He was the man stopped on Highway 41.
The sheriff had taken $8,400 from his glove compartment.
Money intended for his daughter's tuition.
The criminal sentencing had ordered that amount returned.
His civil case produced an additional settlement of $95,000.
I remembered the first page of Caleb's notebook.
The date.
March 14.
The amount.
The missing receipt.
The lack of an evidence entry.
Those details had mattered.
Without them, Holloway's account might have remained one man's word against the sheriff's.
The notebook had helped preserve a record that investigators could examine.
The same was true for the other incidents.
A date could be checked.
A report could be compared with testimony.
A bank transfer could be traced.
A deed could be examined.
The truth did not always arrive in a dramatic confession.
Sometimes it emerged from ordinary records placed beside one another.
That lesson stayed with me.
Then there was my own civil claim.
For a long time, I had not wanted to think about compensation.
I had been focused on the criminal case.
The investigation.
The trial.
The property losses.
And the families who had waited for years.
But my injury had also been real.
My arrest had been wrongful.
The force used against me had fractured my wrist.
And the public humiliation had been recorded and shown across the country.
I had legal rights too.
I could not dismiss them simply because others had suffered more.
A friend from law school reminded me of that.
Her name was Denise Okafor.
She practiced civil rights law in Savannah.
We had known each other for years.
Denise understood the case.
She had seen the video.
She knew about the medical evidence.
And she knew the sheriff had been convicted.
She told me my false-arrest and excessive-force claims were strong.
I listened.
She explained that the recording was important.
The fracture was documented.
The jury had already established criminal wrongdoing.
There was substantial evidence supporting civil liability.
She said I could pursue a significant settlement.
I thought about the conversation afterward.
I did not need the money to survive.
I had my salary.
My home.
My work.
But I also knew that failing to pursue my claim would not help anyone else.
The county's conduct had caused harm.
Its insurer could be required to compensate that harm.
And the money could be used for something meaningful.
I called Denise back.
I told her to file the case.
She did.
We followed the proper process.
I did not ask for special treatment.
I did not use my judicial position to pressure anyone.
Denise handled the claim as my attorney.
Six months later, Pell County's insurance carrier agreed to settle.
The amount was $425,000.
I remember seeing the figure in writing.
Four hundred twenty-five thousand dollars.
It was more money than I had expected to receive from an afternoon I would gladly have avoided.
But I did not think of it as a prize.
It came from an injury.
An unlawful arrest.
And conduct that should never have occurred.
I decided not to keep the settlement for myself.
I wanted the money to support work that could help other people avoid similar harm.
I thought about Jaylen.
Hattie.
The families whose land had been taken.
The people who had written letters because they did not know where else to turn.
I also thought about Caleb's notebook.
A cheap blue spiral book.
A few pages of dates.
An ordinary object that had helped reveal serious misconduct.
The settlement gave me an opportunity to support people working to protect rights before another family lost everything.
I had spent years interpreting the law from behind a bench.
Now I could contribute to organizations helping people understand the law before they reached a courtroom.
The decision became clear.
I would use the money to support education.
Property rights.
And access to legal assistance in Pell County.
I did not want the arrest to become the most important thing about my life.
But I wanted something useful to grow from it.
Something that would last longer than the video.
Longer than the news coverage.
Longer than the bruises on my wrist.
I began making arrangements.
And every decision brought me back to the same two objects.
Jaylen's yellow letter.
And Caleb's blue notebook.
One had asked for help.
The other had preserved evidence.
Together, they had helped expose what powerful people wanted hidden.
Now I wanted to help make sure the next person in trouble would have somewhere to turn before having to write a desperate letter.
Click here to continue reading: PART 13: I Received Four Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand Dollars After My Arrest, but I Knew Exactly Which Families Needed That Money More Than I Did
I Went Into a Small Georgia Diner for Lunch, Never Expecting the Sheriff to Put Me in Handcuffs Before I Finished Eating
Part 12 of 15
