<p>The Jenkins County sheriff illegally put inmates to work at his timber business, mobile home park and his home for more than a decade, The Augusta Chronicle reported Sunday.</p><p>The newspaper obtained statements from 31 former inmates and two former deputies about James Robert "Bobby" Womack's alleged actions.</p><p>Inmates said they ran chain saws cutting timber in his woods, patched up holes in the walls of trailers and laid sod and cut grass at his home.</p><p>Under Georgia law, it is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison each time a sheriff uses inmate labor for personal gain.</p><p>William Oglesby, a convicted child molester, said that while awaiting a transfer from Jenkins County to the state system in fall 2002, the sheriff had him drive logging trucks to sawmills as far away as Savannah and Bulloch County. He worked sometimes from morning to midnight and was paid cash ranging from $100 to $250 a week, he said.</p><p>"You'd be glad to get that when you don't have no money," Oglesby said.</p><p>Thirty-one of 48 parolees, probationers and state prisoners contacted by the newspaper who were convicted in Jenkins County and held in the county jail said the sheriff let inmates out of jail to work on his log crews, do odd jobs around his house or remodel trailers and houses.</p><p>Fifteen of the 31 former inmates said they were among the workers dating back to 1990. Seven men also said they were told to wash the sheriff's and his wife's personal cars outside the jail.</p><p>Several former inmates said they earned cash or could leave the jail for the weekend in exchange for working at Womack's properties. Womack and his wife own more than 215 acres in Jenkins County, located south of Augusta, including 175 acres off U.S. Highway 25, a store, two houses, a mobile home park and a cluster of trailers, according to records from the Jenkins County tax assessor's office.</p><p>Former Jenkins County deputies James Chesser and Leroy Morgan confirmed the work accounts.</p><p>"It was just a common practice. It was a way of life," said Chesser, who worked for Womack for two years before he was fired in 1999 for being "untruthful," according to a termination report signed by Womack.</p><p>Morgan, who now works for the Jefferson County Marshal's Office, said he saw Womack one day at his trailer park off U.S. Highway 25 with two inmates holding shovels and standing over a buried septic tank. He said he did not report what he saw.</p><p>"A lot of this was going on before I got there," he said. "By me just getting there and this going on for so long, I didn't think there was anything I could do."</p><p>Chesser said he told Joe Martin, then the Ogeechee Circuit District Attorney that the sheriff was using inmate labor and Martin responded, "Y'all elected him." Martin said that conversation never took place and he never received any such information about Womack.</p><p>Richard Evans, a former officer for the Millen Police Department, said he reported it to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in 2000. John Edwards, special agent in charge of the GBI's Statesboro office, said he has no record of Evans talking to an agent.</p><p>"That's not to say I haven't heard rumors of things," he said. "If I chased down all the rumors _ moreover I don't have jurisdiction to it _ but if I did, I wouldn't have time to work the murders and armed robberies."</p><p>Womack, 69, has been sheriff since 1984 and said he does not plan to seek another term, citing his age and poor health.</p><p>Womack did not return repeated calls seeking comment.</p><p>___</p><p>HASH(0x2865620)</p>
