Black Women Deliver Justice in a Southern City. Their Own Way.

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Defendants plead for a second (or third) chance in courtrooms across the country on a daily basis, but here in this majority African-American town, where the population is just over 100,000, the criminal justice system is unique: Black women are in charge, and they say they run things differently.

LaDawn Blackett Jones is the city’s solicitor, or prosecutor, Viveca Powell serves as public defender and Tiffany Carter Sellers is the chief judge. The court clerks and staff are also black women.

“As people from around the country are looking at what is going on here, we are trying to set the example for the way true law and justice should work,” Blackett Jones said.

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The young man here pleading for mercy is the latest case testing that philosophy.

As a black woman and a judge, Carter Sellers told NBC News she can be tough on crime while at the same time give a fairer shake to defendants, depending on the circumstances.

“From a practical standpoint, I think I bring that fact that I’m a wife to an African-American man, and we have African-American children, and so empathy and sympathy — I bring that to the table every day,” she said, adding that she cringes when she hears people talk about racial bias and corruption in the justice system.

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‘We’re not sprinkling magic dust’

In South Fulton, there’s a focus on honing a community-oriented court. Pamphlets are distributed to residents informing them of their rights. And Carter Sellers takes care to ensure that everyone who comes before her understands the plea process and courtroom procedures during each session, even if they’ve heard it before.

{snip} Under the program, a resident could be sentenced to community service, write an essay, attend a city council meeting or parenting/anger management classes in lieu of jail time or costly fines.

{snip} There’s also the town’s “green team,” which allows residents who can’t pay fines to clean up city parks for $15 an hour.

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“We’re not sprinkling magic dust anywhere to make magic happen, but we are cognizant of where we are in America today, so that means that there’s still police brutality,” said Blackett Jones [the city prosecutor]. {snip}

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South Fulton, which was a previously unincorporated part of Fulton County, {snip} and it was by chance, not intention, that each was a black woman.

The town is 89 percent black and experts believe it to be the only town of its size with black women overwhelmingly running the criminal justice system. Bill Edwards, the mayor, is black, as are Keith Meadows, the police chief, and the seven city council members — and five of them are women.

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Gillespie added that having African-Americans in top government roles in a majority African-American city “can legitimize institutions in the mind of citizens.”

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Powell, the public defender, said having black women at the wheel is helpful because “it eliminates the cultural gap” when dealing with African-American defendants.

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“I’m amazed that it’s 2018 and it’s never happened before,” she said. “But I just think that African-American women have this history of taking care of everybody else, right? And so often our own success is put to the wayside to take care of everybody else, so I’m obviously just very, very proud.

{snip} “People think that when African-Americans are in charge of the criminal justice system we somehow are light on crime. I think that the people in South Fulton know that we are not light on crime.”

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