Mark Begnaud of Eshman Begnaud. (Courtesy photo)

A federal judge declined to throw out a class action accusing Fulton County Sheriff Ted Jackson and his chief jailer of keeping inmates behind bars after they were set to be released if a statewide criminal database happened to break down.

One such outage, in November 2014, resulted in hundreds of inmates being held after they were otherwise cleared for release. As a result, more than 300 people remained jailed for a day or more until the Georgia Crime Information Center database came back online and jail staffers could check whether there were outstanding warrants or holds pending before turning them loose.

District Judge Michael Brown of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia refused to dismiss Fourteenth Amendment claims for false imprisonment against Jackson and Chief Jailer Mark Adger, although he did throw out claims that the inmate's detention constituted an illegal seizure under the Fourth Amendment.

Brown also ordered the parties into mediation. Plaintiffs attorney Mark Begnaud said they would ask the judge to appoint a magistrate to mediate the case. 

Begnaud said that, between damages and several years' worth of litigation, "the county's exposure is pretty high."

"By our estimate, our clients had a total of 678 days of over-detention," said Begnaud, of Decatur's Eshman Begnaud, who represents the plaintiffs with Nathanael Horsley of the Horsley Law Center and Stern Law principal Jessica Stern. 

"There are also significant legal fees involved," he said. "We had to litigate an Open Records Act lawsuit first, and six substantive motions were litigated and ruled on so far. It's been a heck of an effort."  

A county spokeswoman referred a query to county attorney Patrise Perkins-Hooker, who declined to comment. 

As detailed in Brown's order and other filings, the case centered on the jail's practice of running inmates' names through the GCIC database and another known as Odyssey.

From 2006 until 2015, the jail was operating under a consent decree under which it was required to release inmates within 24 hours of the time they became eligible for release.

But the GCIC database, which is operated by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, would have outages that could last for days.

If it was offline, the files of inmates who made bond, had their charges dismissed or were otherwise due to be released would nonetheless be dropped back in the jail's "clear for release" basket, and they'd stay locked up until the database started working again.

That's what happened to former inmate Oswald Thompson Jr. during the 2014 outage. 

Thompson was held for four days after he posted bond on a speeding charge. He was finally released when his charges were nolle prossed. 

In 2015, Thomson filed a putative class action against Jackson and Adger in Fulton County Superior Court. The case was removed to federal court in 2016 and included 10 named plaintiffs who had been held between 24 hours to as much as 125 hours after they were due to be released. 

Brown certified the class in 2019, which Begnaud said numbers 313 people. The county said the actual number was 256.

The county filed a motions for summary judgment, arguing that Jackson and Adger were protected by qualified immunity because they had the discretion to tell their staff to hold the inmates until they'd been cleared through the GCIC, and had not violated any clear constitutional duty by doing so. 

Brown wrote that emails between jail personnel showed they knew inmates were being held improperly.   

"Defendants argue their subordinates did not have subjective knowledge that they violated Plaintiff's constitutional rights. Defendants claim the relevant emails do not explicitly discuss inmates being over-detained," Brown wrote.

"Of course they do. A subordinate sent an email stating that ninety-six inmates were ready to be released but were being held pending only GCIC checks. A jury could read that email—and the other emails cited above—to show the subordinate's knowledge," he said. 

There was also testimony from one jail staffer "that she knew inmates entitled to release were being held during the outage. It makes no difference that the subordinates may not have put this together as a constitutional violation," Brown said. 

"The law does not require that they understand the constitutional significance of holding inmates after they became eligible for release, only that they intended to hold them and that their actions violated the constitution."

Jackson and Adger also argued that they could not be liable because they didn't personally interact with the plaintiffs, Brown wrote.

"But, the undisputed evidence suggests that—at some point during the outage—both defendants became aware of the outage, knew that inmates eligible for release were being held, and specifically decided to keep the GCIC requirement in place," he said.

"Regardless of whether Defendants knew the identity of any specific inmate or personally refused, a jury could conclude Defendants personally participated in the detention of inmates held after they knew of the outage," Brown wrote.