Parole board members quit; Gov. appoints GBI director to panel

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Posted 4:22PM on Thursday, June 13, 2002

ATLANTA - Embattled Pardons and Paroles Board members Bobby Whitworth and Walter Ray resigned Thursday amid a state investigation, and Gov. Roy Barnes announced that he has named a special attorney general to take over the case. It was the latest development in an ethics controversy that has engulfed the clemency agency for months and threatened to spill over into Barnes' re-election campaign. Republicans already have cited the case as an example of the ills of one party holding power too long. Ray, a former state senator, and Whitworth, former corrections commissioner, are under investigation over allegations they accepted money to lobby legislators on behalf of a company that supervises probationers. Their names have also been mentioned in an unrelated investigation of state Sen. Van Streat of Nicholls, who faces charges that he took a campaign contribution in exchange for helping to get a convicted murderer moved to a less-secure prison. Barnes said Thursday that Attorney General Thurbert Baker has recused himself from the ongoing investigation of Ray, Whitworth and Streat all Democrats. Barnes named Coweta County District Attorney Pete Skandalakis, also a Democrat, as a special attorney general to pursue the cases. Barnes named GBI Director Buddy Nix to fill one vacancy on the parole board and said he will fill the other later. Vernon Keenan, the deputy director, will become acting director of the GBI. In January, a former corrections official said that he has notes of a meeting in which Ray and Whitworth advocated the transfer of the same prisoner who Streat wanted moved. Both have denied they were acting on Streat's behalf. Ray and Whitworth have previously acknowledged they were paid consultants for Detention Management Services, which supervises people sentenced to probation for misdemeanors, but contend they violated no laws. State law was changed in 2000 to shift responsibility for managing misdemeanor offenders from the state to local governments, a step some said would help companies such as Detention Management Services. Baker's decision to recuse himself comes a week after Streat's lawyer filed documents accusing Baker and others of conspiring to destroy papers pointing to the involvement of the attorney general's office in trying to win the parole of a convicted drug offender. The attorney, Craig Gillen, also argued that Baker, as a state legislator, sought to influence the Board of Pardons and Paroles on behalf of the son of an insurance executive whose firm had given him campaign contributions. Gillen argued that constituted selective prosecution of Streat, and asked the governor to remove Baker from the case. Baker called the motion an attempt to derail the case. Streat, who was suspended from office pending the outcome of his case, has denied guilt.