Local & State Headlines

Complaint lodged against DA

• The Southwest Judicial Circuit's district attorney says a complaint filed against her is politically motivated.

J.D. Sumner

AMERICUS — A complaint has been filed with the state bar claiming that the Southwestern Judicial Circuit’s district attorney has unfairly prosecuted men involved in domestic violence cases while ignoring women who have broken the law, a local attorney says.

District Attorney Cecilia Cooper acknowledged the complaint Thursday and said it’s the latest move by a local attorney to get her unseated as the area’s top prosecutor.

Albany attorney Jim Finklestein said he mailed a 20-page letter to the state bar outlining evidence he says supports his claim that Cooper has targeted men for prosecution without sufficient evidence.

“I found at least four cases where she seemingly ignored the evidence and prosecuted these men while choosing to ignore the criminal acts committed by the women in the cases,” Finklestein said.

Cooper, who is up for re-election this year, denies Finklestein’s allegations as completely political, saying that the statistics don’t back up his comments.

“Since I’ve been in office, after looking at the evidence, about 55 percent of domestic cases where a man was the aggressor, the charges have been dropped,” Cooper said. “In about 43 percent of the cases where women were the aggressors, the charges have been dropped. So I hardly think that is evidence of malicious prosecution against men.”

One of Finklestein’s clients, former Sumter County Deputy Wesley Stanfield, was exonerated Monday of rape charges after Cooper dismissed charges against him.

In an e-mail announcing the decision to the media, Finklestein compared Cooper to the district attorney who prosecuted the sexual assault case against the Duke LaCrosse team and was ultimately disbarred and jailed for so vigorously pursuing the charges.

“A complaint has been filed with the State Bar of Georgia’s Office of General Counsel against Southwestern Judicial Circuit District Attorney Cecilia Cooper for numerous violations of State Bar Rules, including but not limited to her misconduct in prosecuting this case and several other cases in which the persons accused were unquestionably innocent of crimes,” Finklestein wrote.

Cooper said Thursday that she received a letter from Finklestein about six months ago calling for her resignation and threatening to have someone run against her.

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