Grieg released, following change in fine $2,500

By Rufus Adair
News Editor

After a habeus corpus hearing Tuesday morning that reviewed the merits, and not the procedures, of his case, Nuwaubian groundskeeper/agent Victor Grieg and lawyers for Putnam County agreed to a compromise settlement that freed Grieg and reduced his fine to $2,500 on charges stemming from zoning code violations in the winter of 1998
 

Grieg had been convicted in Magistrate's Court in May 1998 of operating a night club in a building permitted as a storage building and located in an agricultural zone.

His appeals exhausted and bankruptcy declared, Grieg had began serving a one-year sentence 11 days ago. He was unable to the $45,750 fine in lieu of going to jail.

However, Tuesday, Atlanta lawyer Ralph Goldberg argued in Putnam Superior Court that Grieg had had ineffective counsel and that the mechanisms leading to the $45,750 fine, and even the one year imprisonment, were beyond the constitutional range of a Magistrate's Court.

Actually, Goldberg and the county's attorney in the case Frank Ford, had worked out a settlement in which Grieg would agree to the conviction and be released from confinement on payment of a $2,500 fine.

The courtroom was filled to capacity with perhaps 200 of Grieg's friends and backers, who burst into applause when Judge James Cline announced the consent order.

In a separate, but related, matter, the Nuwaubians on Monday evening turned in a professionally drawn plat to the Planning and Zoning office in an attempt to get about 10 structures permitted - and get the padlocks off them that were placed there in May under a court order.

As to whether the two events represented a slacking off of the recent confrontational postures from county officials and from the Nuwaubians, there were mixed signals Tuesday.

Justice Department negotiator Bob Ensley said of the permit application, "It looks like we are on the road to resolving this thing."

County Attorney Dorothy Adams said she was happy with the Grieg settlement, and that the issue had been the enforcement of the county's ordinances, not the amount of the fine.

"We thought it made sense to compromise," said Ford. "If he were incarcerated, it was going to cost the county money. Grieg is not a hardened criminal. He was convicted of a zoning violation. It seemed the just thing to do"

However, the crowd was hardly out of the courthouse before talk was heard about a suit for damages against the county.

Likewise, it was not clear whether the plat prepared by Ogletree and Shivers in Milledgeville was adequate for the county's needs.

Nuwaubian contractor Bernard Foster was only one who argues that the Planning and Zoning office treated the Nuwaubians "different from everybody else."

And that $45,000 fine in Magistrate's Court was "ridiculous," he added.

Yes, in some cases the Nuwaubians have been treated differently than others, said Adams on hearing the comment. "Everybody has bent over backwards" to accommodate their demands, she said.

Whether Tuesday marked the end of a chapter or just another page may have been learned at noon Wednesday (after this paper's press time) when Building Inspector Dizzy Adams told the Nuwaubians he would have a decision on the adequacy of the plat.

WHAT IS EXTORTION ?

AND WHY IN THIS LITTLE TOWN OF EATONTON, SITUATION LIKE THIS KEEP GOING ON AND ON ? "READ CHICKEN COME HOME TO ROOST" BY DAVID MORELAND IT HAPPENED TO HIM ALSO.