Agreement frees woman who remained jailed over fine

Published 12:10 pm Wednesday, September 20, 2006

ATLANTA — A woman who was held at a halfway house eight months past her 120-day sentence because she could not pay a $705 fine has been released.

Ora Lee Hurley, 45, was released Tuesday after an agreement between the Georgia Department of Corrections and the Southern Center for Human Rights, which had filed a lawsuit over the case.

Despite having a job at a restaurant, Hurley was unable to pay the fine because she also had to pay the state $600 a month for room and board at the Gateway Diversion Center in Atlanta, her attorneys said. She also had to spend another $76 for other expenses.

But the legal Catch-22 was resolved when officials agreed to apply part of Hurley’s rent payments toward her fine, said Bill Amideo, general counsel for Corrections.

“We’re looking at all the circumstances of the case,” Amideo said. “We’re going to look at the system to see if there are other cases like this that need to be addressed.”

Hurley, who was serving time at the diversion center for a probation violation, will be turned over to law enforcement officials in Sumter County where she faces drug possession charges from July 2005, said Sarah Geraghty, a lawyer for the Southern Center for Human Rights. Hurley was in the Atlanta diversion center for a 1991 probation violation stemming from another drug arrest.

“We’re grateful to the Department of Corrections for taking immediate steps to remedy the problem,” Geraghty said after a brief hearing before Fulton County Superior Court Judge John Goger where the settlement was announced.

Geraghty had earlier called Hurley’s situation “another debtor’s prison case.”