It was a little after 8 a.m., when my son came from his room, lit up like a Christmas tree. He was wearing a gray and white camouflage hoodie with the words “Backwoods” in big red letters. His bright red gym shorts were hanging over the top of his sagging gray jeans and on his back was a very colorful Rick and Morty backpack. I couldn’t help but smile. He looked handsome with his head full of twisty dreads and smiled back at me like he knew it. “You looking mighty colorful this morning,” I observed.

He lowered his head, glancing at his gray and white Nikes. “Yeah,” he answered, a man of few words. 

His dad reached for the backdoor knob and looked over at him, “You missed the bus, again, Son?” He knew the answer to that because we all heard the school bus leave as soon as his dad opened the door, but he still asked, rubbing it in our son’s face.

“Yup, I’m gone take MARTA,” my son answered. 

“You want me to give you a ride?” I asked. I had time before work. I didn’t have to log in at my home desk for almost an hour.

“I’m alright,” he called over his shoulder, going out the door.

I went upstairs, and a wave of thick nausea swept over me on that September morning in 2022. This had been a recurring sensation I’d been dealing with when it came to my youngest son. For years. I have five other children, but something about this kid, since he was 13 or 14, sent me into near panic, a borderline anxiety attack, if I didn’t know where he was. He was 17 years old, six foot one, and dark skinned, like Hershey’s chocolate. For the first time in my life, I had real, persistent fear for someone I loved. 

This is the day I found out why.

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At around 1 p.m., he sent me a TikTok about something, and I sent him the lol face. I texted back good news. I had spoken with a gym manager, and they said they could train him in boxing. He wanted to be a fighter, and a place on Metropolitan Parkway had opened up.

About an hour later I got a call from the school. My son had been arrested in class. They couldn’t tell me why, but he was in custody. The witness identified him by his clothing. I rushed to the police station. It was the beginning of something I once considered every Black mother’s nightmare. Now I know it was more than that. 

I was going to learn the truth about the “justice” system from inside the belly of the beast. And it was ugly.

It’s been 28 months since my son was arrested and detained by the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department. 

Despite having no criminal history, having never been in trouble, having ties all over the state of Georgia and not being a flight risk, he was denied bond twice. The second time was after he’d been stabbed eight times while being held on Rice Street, the Fulton County Jail where the Justice Department has found conditions to be “inhumane, violent, and hazardous.” He has been moved to a facility in Alpharetta since then. At both bond hearings, members of the DA’s office opposed his release. The charges against my son are serious, but we were not able to present evidence to support his innocence, and both judges denied his bond. 

The second one was a judge I had voted for. 

I will never forget going into that voting booth and seeing his name on the ballot. It was 2020. I hesitated for the first time, asking myself. “How do I know this is a good judge? How do I know if I need to vote for this man? Thomas Cox Jr., Superior Court Judge. I don’t know anything about him. He could be one of those judges that let out the wrong people or he could be unfair.” I had never paused over a name like that before. It seemed like knowing the record of a judge was important, but I had done zero research and was being asked to make a blind decision based on his name. His name sounded vaguely familiar. And there was a “D” behind it. The “D” is what carried the weight. I checked the box and took a sigh. If he had a “D” behind his name, he was probably one of the good ones.

I couldn’t be more wrong.

Every lawyer we called had the same response as the first one we called. This judge rules in favor of a prosecutor’s recommendation every time, they said.

When Judge Ural Glanville demonstrated questionable judicial behavior to the world during the YSL trial, I was relieved that others were seeing examples of how Fulton County judges conduct themselves. Then, I saw the interview the head of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, Robb Pitts, did about how the backlog of cases was due to the judges not doing their jobs. It was cold comfort, but the truth is available for anyone who cares to know it.

Sadly, in this year’s election, the truth didn’t make the impact you would think it would when so much attention was placed on the presidential race. We should know why there continues to be a backlog of civic and criminal cases in Fulton County, even with additional funding. The YSL trial—the longest trial in state history and one that required significant resources—concluded in December  with the defendants acquitted of the most serious charges

But there we were, getting ready to vote them all back in again. All three—Glanville, Cox, and Fani Willis—ran largely unopposed. (No one took the Republican wanna-be DA candidate seriously.) Some of the same people responsible for imprisoning my son for more than two years without bond and without a trial were going to win with ease. 

It was devastating.

I was determined to not vote in 2024. Not if the same cast of characters were the only ones available to fill the roles.  

I have been an avid voter since my early 20s, and I participated religiously in what I considered to be a necessary duty for every citizen. But voting for someone who seemed to care nothing for the law, and seeing how this doesn’t just affect me, but others who must face the people who are being put in office with little thought for how they truly perform, shook me to the core. 

I lost it after my son was stabbed, nearly a year after his arrest. He had never been hospitalized. Never been seriously hurt. Had never been hurt at all, without me being there to take care of him and help him get better.

 I’d gone to the Grady Hospital ER the night he was stabbed and begged the staff to let me see him. The intake nurse told me no, since he was an inmate in custody they couldn’t allow anyone to see him. I explained to her that this was my baby boy. This was my 18-year-old son. He had never been in the hospital without me or other members of his family there. “Can you please just go see how he is, please? I just want you to let him know we are here and we are praying for him.”

When the nurse came back, she pulled me to the side and said, “He’s okay. He’s talking and he’s alert. He asked me to go get him some things, so I did.”

I smiled and broke down and cried with relief.

The emergency hearing we requested after my son was stabbed was put off for another month. At that point, we had been through three attorneys and $19,000. At the hearing for a bond, the prosecutor opposed my son’s release. She argued his DNA was in the home of the alleged victim, and that there was evidence he had stalked them. I yelled out, “That’s a lie!” like I was in Congress, because I had seen the DNA evidence. The judge kicked me out of the courtroom.

After the second bond hearing, I sent the judge a letter explaining the facts to him. He ordered me to court and told me to stop or I would be arrested. So, I did. But when my son was put in a facility where pen and paper were not allowed (yes, this is a violation of his rights), I wrote a motion for him, as his power of attorney, to represent himself, and notified the judge we had fired our son’s attorney. 

Throughout Georgia, judges must respond and decide promptly or within 90 days to all motions “of any nature” (O.C.G.A.-15-6-21). I filed a complaint with the Georgia Judicial Commission that the judge was not adhering to this standard. They found no wrongdoing. After more motions, including an ignored motion for another hearing to determine whether my son was competent to represent himself, I filed another complaint with the Georgia Judicial Commission. They again found no wrongdoing. 

My son had been moved to a new facility and began to file motions for himself. Finally, one of his handwritten motions was received by the clerk.

Still, the judge claimed I continued to send him letters after he ordered me not to—even though I hadn’t—and he issued a show cause order, asking me to appear before him. I answered that he should show me where he has the authority to order me to court since I’m not a party to the case. I further wanted him to show me where I had sent him ex parte communication in violation of my previous agreement. When he didn’t answer, I didn’t show up. Period.

I see this abuse of power as another reason we need to know who we’re voting for. I’m not a criminal, and I’ll be damned if I’ll be treated like one.

As Election Day neared, I kept hearing stories about how Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor, had sent innocent Black people to jail with glee. They had painted her as tough on crime—aka unfair to Black people—and this stain had stuck. I saw the research that found no evidence of this and knew I was seeing another smear campaign. The personal, hateful, unnecessary comments, often from other Black people, men and women, rubbed me the wrong way.

Now that I knew better, I could do better.

A woman who dared to stand up and lead, no matter how smart, how qualified, how committed, was being drug through the mud for being a woman. And if they would do it to her they were also willing to do it to us, for daring to vote in our own best interest and standing up for our truth.

I had vowed to never vote again but I couldn’t do that to my daughters or my sons. One day their wives and my daughters and granddaughter may need the services and rights I was ready to toss away because I had been hurt and disappointed in myself for not being an educated voter.

If I refused to do my research and threw in the towel, claiming they’re all the same, I was not giving the people who do care, the ones who value their contribution as public servants and do need people of character to join them, the support they need. 

When I showed up on Election Day at the local school, brisk but light traffic was coming in and out. There were less than a dozen people in different stages of voting, and I sailed in and out in minutes.

I am not someone who would traditionally be called justice-impacted. I am not facing serious criminal charges or convicted of a crime. I am not forced to disclose my criminal conviction(s) on every application for the rest of my life. I am not paying off thousands in probation fees or required to see a parole officer to keep my freedom. 

But I am still, like hundreds of thousands of other Georgians, justice-impacted all the same. I am forced to pay money to speak with my son, prevented from seeing him released on bond so that he can assist in his own defense “in the free world” as he calls it. I am saddened as I watch the same people responsible for what the Justice Department’s new report calls ”unconstitutional and unlawful conditions,” aided by the lack of urgency from the solicitor, DA, and judges. 

And all of these people were just re-elected to new terms.

On January 6, 2025, a motion to recuse Judge Cox was officially noted by the court. The case is presently stayed, and a new judge is reviewing the motion. My son was moved back to the Fulton County Jail on Rice Street on January 13, 2025. No date has been set for trial.

Canopy Atlanta reached out to Judge Thomas Cox Jr. for comment. He did not respond to an email and a phone call.