Catherine Bernard

09/04/2026

Argument before the Georgia Court of Appeals in Moore v. Williams, where then-senator Colton Moore was physically attacked at the Capitol by a member of the House Speaker's staff* while walking into a joint session of the General Assembly.

Moore sought a warrant for Williams' arrest, and it was denied by the magistrate court. That decision was appealed to superior court, which remanded the case down for a new hearing with an independent magistrate judge (the initial judge had also signed a warrant for Moore, and made two references to his own potential bias during the hearing. The governor appointed him to the state court bench a few weeks after this.) Williams appealed that decision, and that is what the Court of Appeals is hearing in this video.

The Speaker was mad at Moore because he had voted no and spoke against a piece of legislation naming a building after the former Speaker, including specific information about corrupt legal violations committed by that Speaker. This of course did not give him any authority to ban Moore from participating in a joint session of the legislature, and of course Williams has provided no evidence of any such ban that he was enforcing with his acts of violence. In fact, when the Speaker was summoned to the hearing, he sought to quash the subpoena on the grounds that he had no relevant evidence to the interaction between Moore and Williams.

We are looking forward to the Court of Appeals' ruling: we believe that under the Superior and State Court Appellate Practice Act, the COA should uphold the Superior Court's ruling and allow the case to be remanded for full hearing with an independent jurist. However, even if they send it back down to Superior Court instead, we believe there is ample evidence to show probable cause for an arrest warrant against the attacker. Let justice be done!

*Who is titled as counsel to the Speaker but does not have a Georgia Bar license, which means either he is engaged in the unauthorized practice of law or the General Assembly's legal counsel is not engaged in the practice of law.

This is "Case No. A26A1553" by Court of Appeals of Georgia on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

09/04/2026

The most important thing about big public criminal cases is not to let your opinions make you hate your friends and neighbors. We are all working off necessarily limited information, and even the people most directly involved often get things wrong. It's good to pay attention and observe rationally (not at the cost of your own life business and areas where your analysis is more valuable), but letting any case become a "scissor statement" (see article below) and destroy your relationships and community is a bad plan.

09/03/2026

09/02/2026

Court, court, and more court.

09/01/2026

Liberty and justice for all. No, seriously.

09/01/2026

"It is certain, I think, that the best government is the one that governs the least. But there is a much-neglected corollary: the best citizen is the one who least needs governing."

-Wendell Berry
(August 5, 1934 - August 31, 2026)