Who's lying: Coomer or Abston?

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Show us the money, boys
 
Courts may have assessed costs to some prisoners without authority.
Now, some want their money back but no-one can find it.
 
County attorney promises to get to the bottom of it

By CHRISTINE GRANT and
GEOFF DAVIDIAN
of The Putnam Pit staff
c. 1997 The Putnam Pit
COOKEVILLE, Tenn. -- Court Clerk Lewis Coomer  says "ask Jerry Abston."

Sheriff Jerry Abston says he doesn't know what Coomer's talking about.

Questions about improper fees being charged to state prisoners serving time in Putnam County Jail have brought  assertions of ignorance from all sides of the government, but the county attorney promises to get to the bottom of the issue.
 


According to Pit sources: When a local man's probation officer told him the county had no right to assess $3,600 in fees added to his court costs, the man went straight to the court clerk's office.  After a short argument, he said, the amount was deducted from the total of more than $7,000 he originally was charged following his 1992 drug conviction.  If he didn't owe it, why was it assessed against him in the first place, the man asked? If he did owe it, why  was so large a debt forgiven?
 
County Attorney Jeff Jones said state law has provided for the collection of some "jailer's fees" since 1985, but he was not sure whether the county had passed a measure authorizing county officials to collect the money from felons. Jones told The Pit in a telephone interview that the 1995 law enabling counties to collect from prisoners did not require special county board approval. Jones  withheld comment on where any money collected under the 1985 provision may have been placed pending responses from parties he said he contacted last week. He told The Pit he would investigate the matter.
 
It wasn't until 1995 that the state legislature authorized counties to collect the cost of housing state prisoners from those who have assets. Under the law, the county could charge prisoners the difference between the state's per-diem payments of $35 per prisoner and the actual cost of boarding them. County Executive Doug McBroom said the state paid as much as $60,000 per month to keep felons in the county jail. Asked about money collected from the prisoners themselves, McBroom said: "I'm not too sure about that."
 
In an interview, Court Clerk Lewis Coomer said the money was co-mingled in one account with other money his office collected for fines and other court fees. Coomer told The Pit that he had records showing which prisoner had paid how much, but it was retrievable only by inmate name. He said there was no way to access the source of the money, or to determine the amount, but it was "big bucks."
 
Meanwhile, The Pit was told by a former prisoner that he was speaking to others in the same situation to see if they could get their money back.
 
The Putnam Pit welcomes calls from current or former inmates who have been charged for each day they spent in Putnam County Jail while serving sentences for state felonies prior to 1995. You can call our official corruption hotline at 1-414-906-1777 and leave a message
 
Still to be determined was the cost to Putnam County of keeping a state prisoner in the County Jail, and whether the state's reimbursement of about $35 per day leaves any shortfall at all.