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Georgia Today: Harris rallies in Savannah; Guards walk off at Fulton Co. Jail; Book profiles murder
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On the Friday August 30th edition of Georgia Today: Vice President Kamala Harris holds a rally in Savannah, her first since accepting the democratic party's nomination for president; Dozens of guards walk off the job at the Fulton County Jail; And a new book looks into the role of race and privilege in the pursuit of justice for a man who murdered his wife.
Peter Biello: Welcome to the Georgia Today podcast from GPB News. Today is Friday, August 30th. I'm Peter Biello. On today's episode, Vice President Kamala Harris holds a rally in Savannah. Her first since accepting the Democratic Party's nomination for president. Dozens of guards walk off the job at the Fulton County Jail. And a new book looks into the role of race and privilege and the pursuit of justice for a man who murdered his wife. These stories and more are coming up on this edition of Georgia Today.
Story 1:
Peter Biello: Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned in Savannah yesterday, holding her first rally since accepting her party's nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention. GPB's Benjamin Payne reports.
Benjamin Payne: About 7,500 people filled Enmarket Arena to capacity to watch Harris give a 20-minute stump speech that delved into her economic agenda more than anything else.
Kamala Harris: I will take on the high cost of housing and work with developers to cut the red tape and build millions of new homes, and I will give 100 million Americans a tax cut, including $6,000 to families during the first year of their child's life.
Benjamin Payne: Georgia voter Connie Williams made the hour and a half drive from Vidalia to attend the rally.
Connie Williams: I loved it. It was crunk. She has brought joy back to us.
Benjamin Payne: Polls show Harris has been closing the gap against Trump and Georgia, but the vice president told her supporters there's much work left to be done before Election Day. For GPB News, I'm Benjamin Payne in Savannah.
Peter Biello: Harris also vowed to overturn Republican backed abortion policies, and she criticized Republicans for limiting abortion in several states, including Georgia.
Kamala Harris: Why don't they trust women? Well, we trust women. And when Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law.
Peter Biello: Georgia's abortion law bans the procedure after the detection of what the law describes as a fetal heartbeat, or about six weeks before many women know they're pregnant. This activity can usually be seen with an ultrasound around six weeks of pregnancy. Exceptions are only in cases of incest and rape that are reported to the police, and in some cases, of medical emergencies.
Story 2:
Peter Biello: While in Georgia yesterday, Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, sat down with CNN for their first major television interview of their presidential campaign, defending her shifting positions on the banning of fracking and the Green New Deal. Harris said her values have not changed.
Kamala Harris: One of the aspects to your point is traveling the country extensively. I mean, I'm here in Georgia. I think somebody told me 17 times since I've been vice president in Georgia alone. I believe it is important to build consensus.
Peter Biello: The interview was taped at a black owned restaurant in Savannah, Kim's Cafe.
Story 3:
Peter Biello: The leader of the state's prison system provided some rare transparency this week, sharing new numbers about in prison deaths and homicides. GPB's Grant Blankenship reports, he spoke Wednesday at a state Senate study committee looking into prison safety.
Grant Blankenship: Georgia Department of Corrections Commissioner Tyrone Oliver told senators that between 2021 and 2023, GDC saw on average, 260 deaths a year. That reflects a 40% increase in average annual deaths compared to the period between 2015 and 2019, as reported by GDC. Oliver did not make that comparison and defended the post-COVID mortality data against critics.
Tyrone Oliver: But the propaganda out there that you know, that this is out of, it's out of control and we're hitting all these record highs. When you look at the total number of deaths, it's been, remaining pretty consistent.
Grant Blankenship: Oliver says GDC is investigating 36 homicides with four months left in the year. That's almost as many killings in Georgia prisons as in all of 2023. For GPB News, I'm Grant Blankenship in Macon.
Story 4:
Peter Biello: Two former Georgia election workers who 100 $148 million defamation judgment against longtime Donald Trump ally Rudy Giuliani are asking the court to seize Giuliani's property. Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss want the cash-strapped former New York City mayor's apartment and other property as they ramp up efforts to collect on the staggering debt. Lawyers for the pair urged a federal court in Manhattan today to force Giuliani to turn over his Madison Avenue apartment and some of his prized New York Yankees memorabilia, including three World Series rings and a signed Joe DiMaggio shirt, among other assets.
Story 5:
Peter Biello: Some security officers at an Atlanta jail under federal investigation walked off the job yesterday. The 74 guards left their posts after the Fulton County Sheriff's Office failed to pay money owed to the third-party contractor that employs them. The office says it's facing a significant budget crisis and owed the contractor more than $1 million. The company told its employees not to report to work yesterday. The sheriff said nearly 50 came to work and were given conditional job offers.
Story 6:
Peter Biello: A former nurse contractor and a detention officer sergeant at the Fulton County Jail were arrested yesterday as part of an ongoing contraband investigation. Nurse Juanita Calloway has been charged with four counts of conspiracy to commit a felony. She was working for NaphCare at the Fulton County Jail and Lorna Heath, a Fulton County detention officer sergeant, was charged with one count of unauthorized possession of a prohibited item by an inmate and one count of violation of oath. So far, the ongoing investigation has uncovered more than $1 million in transactions used to facilitate criminal activity within the Fulton County Jail. Six other people were arrested last week, and warrants were issued for the arrests of five others. The contraband involved includes drugs, cell phones and other electronics.
Story 7:
Peter Biello: A judge has allowed bond for a Florida sheriff's deputy who was charged with manslaughter after fatally shooting U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Roger Fortson. Former Okaloosa County Deputy Eddie Duran faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted of manslaughter with a firearm. Duran's body camera recorded him shooting Fortson immediately after the airman opened his door, holding a handgun pointed at the floor. Duran had been mistakenly sent there regarding a domestic disturbance. He said he fired in fear of his life. Duran was released from jail yesterday afternoon after posting a $100,000 bond.
Story 8:
Peter Biello: The former solicitor general in northeast George's Hall County, has pleaded guilty to illegally using funds from the county and the prosecuting attorney's council to cover personal expenses. Stephanie Woodard was sentenced today to 12 months of probation and was ordered to pay more than $2,000 in restitution.
Story 9:
Peter Biello: The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's music director is releasing her first recording with the ASO. Natalie Stutzmann is now in her third season leading the orchestra. The recording, out today, is dedicated to Czech composer Antonin Dvorak and his New World Symphony 'An American Suite.' The performances were recorded live in Atlanta's Symphony Hall last year. It's the ASO's first release since 2020, and the latest of scores for Stutzmann, who came to Atlanta after conducting major orchestras around the world.
Story 10:
Peter Biello: In January 1987, Lita McClinton answered the door of her Buckhead home to find a man on her doorstep holding a box of flowers. Behind that box was a gun, and the man shot and killed McClinton before fleeing. At the time, McClinton, a black woman from a prominent Atlanta family, was finalizing her divorce from her husband, James Sullivan, who was white and stood to lose millions of dollars in the settlement. And though he was a prime suspect, Sullivan, who was in Palm Beach at the time of the murder, managed to avoid conviction for the crime for 19 years. A new book looks at why it took so long to bring justice to McClinton and her family. It's called A Devil Went Down to Georgia: Race, Power, Privilege and the Murder of Lita McClinton. And author Deb Miller Landau is with me now. Welcome to the program.
Deb Miller Landau: Thank you so much for having me.
Peter Biello: So you first encountered this case more than two decades ago when you were writing for Atlanta Magazine.
Deb Miller Landau: That's right. When I got my hands on the story, it was already 17 years after the murder. And, you know, I kind of fell into it really hard and did a lot of research and just thought, you know, why hasn't anyone been convicted of her murder yet? What's going on here? And so that was my first foray into the story.
Peter Biello: But certainly not your last. So what was it about this story that made you want to pick it up years later? What stuck with you?
Deb Miller Landau: Well, I, carried this box of files that, you know, I scrawled on Sullivan on the top of years and years before, carried it and move across the country through several, you know, house moves and just couldn't sort of get rid of it. There was something about the story that I felt like it had more to teach me. And fast forward to summer of 2020, worlds going through the pandemic. The Black Lives Matter movement has come to pass. George Floyd has been murdered, and we're in a place where we're really starting to have conversations about race in a way that we haven't before. So I started doing sort of some really digging in on my own experience, as a white woman in this culture and a kind of white dominant culture and what that meant. And it really had me thinking about Lita and Jim, who were an interracial couple at a time when, you know, Georgia's miscegenation laws forbidding, interracial marriage had only been repealed a few years prior. What would their experience have been like? And I really start to think more about it. And I opened the lid.
Peter Biello: Well, tell us a little more about Lita McClinton. Who was she?
Deb Miller Landau: Lita was born in 1952, in Atlanta, and her family were, very prominent members of the community. Her father would go on to be an executive at the Department of Transportation Civil Rights Division. Her mother was on the Georgia State General Assembly for 12 years. And they were just sort of very formidable people. Had grown up, born and raised in Atlanta. But Lita grew up in a time where it was still whites had an entrance and blacks had a separate entrance. She would live through the Civil Rights Act, the desegregation of schools, the Voting Rights Act. So several sort of civil rights activities were happening in the background. And her parents were very involved and influential in asking the kind of questions like, well, what are civil rights, anyway? And what do we want about desegregation? What would it look like? And so she was very in the mix of a kind of elevated, academically fueled, affluent black community.
Peter Biello: And she meets Jim Sullivan, a man who moved to Georgia from Massachusetts. That's where the title comes from, A Devil Went Down to Georgia, and he romances her, and they marry. And it turns into something that seems to me like a textbook case of domestic abuse. Right? He controls her through money. He isolates her when they move to Palm Beach, Florida. And this will sound like skipping over a lot. There's a lot of details in this book, but the marriage falls apart and she decides to divorce him. Moves away from the Palm Beach location where she felt very much like an outsider and goes to stay in Buckhead. What happens from there?
Deb Miller Landau: Back in the day, we weren't talking about domestic violence. I mean, what happened behind closed doors was very much a private matter. And so I think that it's important to bring that up. But she's back in Buckhead. She's filed for divorce from Jim Buckhead is arguably one of the whitest, most affluent neighborhoods in Atlanta. And she's a black woman living in, in the middle of Buckhead. And so that was sort of an unusual sight at the time, too, but very much home, you know, really looking forward to the next chapter of her life. She's 35, just turned 35 when she gets a knock at her door.
Peter Biello: The knock comes from the man I referenced in the intro holding the box of flowers with the gun behind it.
Deb Miller Landau: Right. So she opens the door to her condo, and that afternoon, a judge was to decide, on the sort of validity of a much contested postnuptial agreement. And it was a big day. It was going to be a big day. In court. And she was nervous and she was up early and she gets a knock on her door. And, you know, witnesses later hear that report that they heard her say 'good morning' to the person at the door. And he shoves a long white box with a pink bow into her arms and takes a gun out of his jacket and shoots. Once misses, and she sort of holds up. Investigators later determined that she held up the box of flowers to try to protect herself and from the second bullet, but it went straight through the box and it hit her in the skull and she died at Piedmont Hospital half an hour later.
Peter Biello: Jim Sullivan was the prime suspect at the time. How do you think he managed to really avoid really facing the consequences of his actions for so long?
Deb Miller Landau: Well, look, you know, we have a long history in this country of giving wealthy white men the benefit of the doubt. You know, it's a truism that if you have wealth, you can buy a better defense. And I think that he had that capability. And the reason why his family went after his, you know, went after him in civil court where the penalty is financial as opposed to jail time. They wanted to take away that one thing from him that kept enabling him to kind of keep getting off and getting off and getting off.
Peter Biello: When he finally does get convicted. How does that register with Lita's parents, who had to wait so long and really did pursue it the whole time, pursue justice?
Deb Miller Landau: Yeah. Lita's parents were most definitely, you know, kind of the heroes of the story. If not for them, Jim Sullivan would be still sipping Mai Tais in Thailand at the moment.
Peter Biello: Which is where he was found. He was found finally in Thailand.
Deb Miller Landau: Was found in Thailand, living with yet another woman and with his name on the door.
Peter Biello: As of the printing of this book, he was in prison in Augusta. Is he still there?
Deb Miller Landau: He's at the Augusta State Medical Prison in Augusta, Georgia. Yeah.
Peter Biello: And you reached out to him?
Deb Miller Landau: I wrote to him several times in Georgia. You know, you can't just go visit an inmate. They need to put you on their visitation list. And he never replied to me. I offered to sort of let him tell his side of the story. He never replied. And it's hard to know because of privacy. You know, health, privacy laws. You know what state he's in. But as of, you know, he's still alive and he's now 83.
Peter Biello: If you did get a chance to ask him a question, what would you ask?
Deb Miller Landau: I guess I would ask him, you know, after all of this, was it worth it? And what do you. I'd like to know what he would say to Lita's family. Yeah, I think I just want to hear what he had to say.
Peter Biello: Well, Deb Miller Landau, author of A Devil Went Down to Georgia, the story of the murder of Lita McClinton and bringing her murderer to justice. Thank you so much for speaking with me. Really do appreciate it.
Deb Miller Landau: Thank you for having me.
Peter Biello: For a deeper dive into A Devil Went Down to Georgia, check out our podcast Narrative Edge and the most recent episode. Orlando Montoya and I talk about what makes Landau's book such a compelling story. Find Narrative Edge at GPB.org/podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
Story 11:
Peter Biello: In sports, the men's Final Four is returning to Atlanta in 2031. The NCAA made the announcement yesterday. Atlanta last hosted the college basketball tournament in 2013. The city would have hosted in 2020, but it was canceled two weeks before the tournament was set to start because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In baseball, the Atlanta Braves lost to the Philadelphia Phillies last night, 5 to 4, after giving up an early lead. Matt Olson homered twice for the Braves, including a 450-foot drive over the batter's eye and deep center field in the third. The two teams face off again tonight in Philly. The Georgia Bulldogs open their season tomorrow against Clemson at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. Fans can watch their home opener in Athens next weekend against Texas Tech. Georgia Tech is scheduled to play their rival Georgia State, in their home opener tomorrow night. The Yellow Jackets are coming off a win against Florida State in Dublin, Ireland. And in golf, the Tour Championship is underway at East Lake in Atlanta. Scottie Scheffler looked dominant as ever yesterday, posting the best round at 665 to build a seven shot lead and take a huge step toward the FedEx Cup title. Scheffler had five birdies over his last seven holes.
Peter Biello: And that's a wrap on this last edition of Georgia Today for the week. If you want to learn more about any of these stories, check out our website GPB.org/news. We're going to take a day off for Labor Day, but we'll be back on Tuesday. And if you subscribe to this podcast, we will pop up automatically in your podcast feed. If you've got feedback, we would love to hear from you. Send us an email and it'll go to the whole team. Send it to GeorgiaToday@GPB.org. I'm Peter Biello. Thanks again for listening and have a great Labor Day weekend.
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For more on these stories and more, go to GPB.org/news
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