Author: Jerry A. Hudson

Attorney Melissa Jill Starling will face two felony charges after being indicted by a Coffee County grand jury last week. The indictment, which was filed on August 27, specifically charges Starling with one count of forgery in the first degree and one count of influencing a witness. On the forgery charge, the indictment asserts that on November 8, 2013, Starling knowingly and unlawfully signed the name of one of her clients to a divorce action that was filed in Coffee County Superior Court. The indictment further alleges that Starling later offered money to the same client on March 3, 2014,…

Michael Berrian of Douglas will spend the rest of his life in a prison cell after entering an Alford plea to one count of felony murder in Coffee County Superior Court Wednesday morning. Alford pleas are a common occurrence in criminal cases where the defendant does not necessarily admit guilt, but concedes that the evidence against him is overwhelming and likely to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. A jury was selected Tuesday for the trial and was instructed to return to hear the case at 10 a.m. Wednesday. Assistant District Attorney John Rumker stated Berrian decided to enter…

The trial of Michael Berrian, who is accused of the 2012 murder of Marcus Demond Collins, is scheduled to begin this week in Coffee County Superior Court. Just after midnight on February 14, 2012, officers with the City of Douglas Police Department responded to the Roundtree Center at 801 South Gaskin Avenue, where they discovered the victim lying on the parking lot at the building. Collins was basicually unresponsive when authorities arrived and succumbed to his injuries shortly thereafter. Michael Berrian was arrested for the murder of Mr. Collins later the same day and has been awaiting trial since then.…

An Irwin County man who confessed to having a sexual encounter with his juvenile step-daughter during an incident that occurred in 2013 in Coffee County was sentenced to a total of 20 years this week. Scarber Joshal Smith of Wray appeared in Coffee County Superior Court on Friday, admitting his guilt as part of a plea agreement with the district attorney’s office. Smith will serve seven years of his 20-year sentence in prison and will be allowed to serve the remainder of his time on probation. Graphic details were given about the incident, which took place last October, during Friday’s…

Law enforcement agencies in Coffee County requested and received over 70 military surplus assault-type rifles between 2006 and 2012 , according to recent data provided by the federal government. The data specifically targets supplies provided to law enforcement through the Defense Logistics Agency’s (DLA) 1033 program, which provides excess military equipment from the U.S. Department of Defense to local agencies. The program has received some scrutiny as of late in the wake of the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the alleged over-militarization of police forces and tactics used for crowd control in the aftermath. According to…

Despite a slight decrease in revenue and the general fund in 2013, Coffee County government received a clean overall audit and was declared to be in sound financial condition Monday during the board of commission’s regular meeting. Robb Hurst of Hurst & Hurst CPA’s delivered the audit report to the commission, stating his overall opinion of the county’s financial practices was positive. The county experienced a 3% decrease in the general fund balance from the prior year, which amounted to approximately $200 thousand. Hurst stated this figure should not be considered negatively, as the expected loss was initially somewhere in…

James Jacobs, the husband of Diana Jacobs, the caretaker recently arrested in connection with a body discovered at Rosewood Manor assisted living home in Nicholls, has also been arrested and charged with financial fraud in connection with the same case. Sheriff’s officials released information Friday morning, August 15, stating investigators with the Coffee County Sheriff’s Office received information that led to the location of James Jacobs in Pierce County. Jacobs was wanted for questioning in regards to the August 8 incident in Nicholls, where the body that investigators believe to be that of Alexander Hunt was found buried in a…

An employee with Rosewood Manor, an assisited living home in Nicholls, has been charged with one count of concealing a dead body after authorities located the remains of a male body adjacent to the facility’s property last Friday. Diana Marie Malphus Jacobs was taken into custody following the incident last Friday evening, August 8, after telling authorities she was aware of the body being buried on the property. At the time, officials did not state whether Jacobs would be charged with a crime. Agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, along with the Coffee County Sheriff’s Office, conducted a search…

Coffee County Sheriff Doyle Wooten has confirmed an inmate assigned to a work detail at the Child Advocacy Center in Douglas walked off from his work detail this afternoon and is still missing. The inmate, identified as 36-year-old Gabriel Benjamin Carelock, was assigned to a work a detail remodeling the Child Advocacy Center and had been on the detail for three weeks. Sheriff Wooten stated the guard assigned to Carelock told the sheriff Carelock had stepped outside to saw some plywood and took flight. Carelock was incarcerated on a contempt order for child support and traffic violations. He is not…

It’s a rare occasion when I pen an article using a first-person format. Due to the nature of this piece, however, I find it not only necessary, but really the only way of conveying the message to the reader. DouglasNow.com officially kicked off its web presence midnight, June 23, 2014. Since that time, we have experienced growth, readership, support, revenue and a tremendous amount of positive feedback which has exceeded anything we could have fathomed. To put it in perspective, in the last month, July 8-Aug. 7, DouglasNow.com has received 79, 941 ‘page views,’ according to an analysis provided by…