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Oconee day laborers still awaiting trial on loitering charges
By Merritt Melancon | juliana.melancon@onlineathens.com | Story updated at 11:05 PM on Sunday, August 6, 2006
Eight months have passed since the Oconee County Sheriff's Office busted a group of day laborers loitering in the parking lot of Home Depot on Epps Bridge Parkway, but most of the men arrested and charged that day have yet to go to trial.

Of the 31 men arrested, some were juveniles and released that day, some were wanted on other warrants and transferred to other jurisdictions, and three pleaded guilty and paid a $337 fine each for the county code infraction. Twenty-two still are waiting for jury trials.

The loitering cases have not made it before a trial judge because Eric Eberhardt, who acts as solicitor for Oconee County, said he still is investigating the cases and has yet to file an accusation, a formal document needed to put magistrate court cases on the Superior Court's calendar.

Most often, the formal accusation contains the same charges levied when a citation for a county code infraction is issued, according to Kimberly Attaberry, who handles county code violation cases for the Oconee County Clerk of Courts Office. But Eberhardt is investigating to make sure that loitering and prowling are the appropriate charges, he said. He has two years from the date the men were arrested to file the accusation or the charges against the men will be dropped.

"There's still a few people I need to talk to on those cases," Eberhardt said. "So I'm still collecting information. I'm not the kind of prosecutor who just files stuff in court and then tries to figure out what's going on."

Eberhardt added that he will be looking at all of the men's cases together, "but I'd like to collect as much information as possible to make sure everyone is treated appropriately."

The Home Depot parking lot has been a rendezvous point for day laborers and area contractors since the store opened and has grown busier. Last August, county officials and local business owners erected a shelter with picnic tables, a metal awning and a portable toilet on a swath of county-owned right-of-way adjoining the home-improvement warehouse to give workers somewhere to gather. Home Depot managers and nearby store owners had complained that the men were backing up traffic in the parking lot and harassing female patrons.

The men were arrested after allegedly not using the shelter. Many of them said standing inside the shelter made it nearly impossible to get work because contractors were wary of driving up to the crowd.

At the time, Hispanic advocacy groups based in Atlanta and some in Athens called the arrests everything from a thinly veiled attempt to push Oconee's small but concentrated Hispanic community out of the county to an outright violation of the mens' civil rights. But no action was taken against the sheriff's office or the county in the months that followed.

On any given morning, between 30 or 40 men still gather in the parking lot waiting for day-labor jobs, and contractors still pick them up for work, but now they stay on the county's right-of-way and inside the shelter, said Sheriff Scott Berry.

"(The operation) was extremely inexpensive and extremely effective," Berry said. "We've had a few complaints, but they are much less common and much less serious."

Many of the day laborers who now congregate in the parking lot weren't in Athens last December, but many of the men who were arrested that day also continue to work there, said one man who did not want to give his name.

The man, in his early 20s and a resident of nearby Pinewoods Estates South Mobile Home Community, said he still looks for work at Home Depot parking lot even though he was arrested in December.

He pleaded not guilty at a January arraignment, but wasn't sure what to do next or even if he is supposed to return to court. He has not talked to a lawyer about his case, he said.

Of the other men who requested jury trials in January, some have moved out of the Athens area and many have taken regular jobs in town, according to their neighbors at Pinewoods South, where many of the day laborers live or lived.