What’s coming up in 2017?

Each new year brings events that may be divided into three columns: those that are certain, those that are expected, and those unforeseen.

No preview of the coming year can cover the last, so start with the first.

The Georgia General Assembly seems certain to convene for its 40-day session on Jan. 9, as so far even Atlanta ice storms haven’t stopped it.

One issue sure to be debated is allowing casino gambling, which the legislature could let voters decide. Local businessman Robert Wright persuaded Columbus Council to pass a resolution supporting a referendum on casinos. He with other local investors hope to open a casino here.

Also, state Sen. Josh McKoon of Columbus has said he again will push for a “religious freedom” law protecting merchants who disagree with gay marriage because of their faith. Gov. Nathan Deal last year vetoed similar legislation some business interests oppose, citing the revenue North Carolina lost from boycotts spurred by its gender-bathroom law.

Also on Jan. 9, the Muscogee County school board will hold its first meeting with two new members – if former at-large representative Cathy Williams is “new.”

Williams will be representing District 7, having won the seat from competitor Sheila Williams in a runoff. The District 7 incumbent, Shannon Smallman, chose not to seek re-election.

Cathy Williams in the May 24 election outpolled another former board member, Norene Marvets.

Coming in fresh is attorney and former Synovus executive Laurie McRae, who will take the midtown District 5 seat board chairman Rob Varner will vacate.

McRae defeated three opponents May 24 to win without a runoff: Pete Taylor, Todd Robinson and Robert Wadkins Jr.

The board will meet for a work session 5 p.m. Jan. 9, then for a regular board meeting 6 p.m. Jan. 17.

Muscogee County also has a new sheriff and Superior Court clerk, each to start work Tuesday.

In a Dec. 6 runoff, retired sheriff’s captain Donna Tompkins defeated incumbent Sheriff John Darr 6,439 votes to 6,019, or 51.69 to 48.31 percent.

In the general election on Nov. 8, Tompkins got 44.3 percent of the vote. Darr got 32 percent, Mark LaJoye got 20.2 percent and write-in candidate Pam Brown drew 3.4 percent.

A key issue in the campaign was Darr’s suing the city government, claiming city leaders violated the charter by dictating his office’s budget rather than adopting the one he proposed. Tompkins said she will drop the lawsuit.

Another incumbent who sued the city also is leaving office. Superior Court Court Linda Pierce also claimed city leaders broke the charter by dictating her budget. She lost the May 24 Democratic Primary to minister Ann Hardman, who on Nov. 8 defeated write-in candidate Mike Garner.

Like Tompkins, Hardman is to start work Tuesday.

Great expectations

Columbus this year has great expectations in education as two new facilities open, one in midtown and the other in the heart of downtown.

The Muscogee school district’s $36 million magnet arts school at 1700 Midtown Drive off Macon Road is expected to be finished in May.

The facility’s about 118,500 square feet on 15 acres between the Columbus Aquatic Center and Rigdon Road Elementary School. A three-story portion’s to accommodate about 500 students in grades 6-12.

Funding for the project comes from the past three 1 percent Special Purpose Local Option Sales Taxes:

• The Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax or SPLOST voters approved in 2003 had $1,160,000 for planning.
• The SPLOST approved in 2009 included $15,754,406 for the project, but the cost had doubled and revenue dropped during a recession, so the project was delayed.
• The SPLOST Columbus voters approved in 2015 includes $6 million to enhance the arts academy, adding a creative writing lab and film school to the project.

The arts academy is to have programs for band, choral, creative writing, dance, film, guitar, music business, musical theater, orchestra, piano, technical theater, theater and visual arts.

The southern block of 12th Street between Broadway and Front Avenue that once housed the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer at the newspaper peak now is home to a new Columbus State University center.

It’s the $25 million CSU Center for Education and Nursing, part of the university’s RiverPark campus. It’s to open this month.

The 90,000-square-foot facility will hold CSU’s School of Nursing and most of its education departments. The project is part of CSU’s First Choice Comprehensive Campaign to raise more than $100 million in private money.

Passersby now can see the glass walkway that links a new three-story building with the newspaper’s historic 1930s, Mediterranean-style structure at 12th Street and Front Avenue.

The center’s expected to bring 1,800 more folks to downtown. More than 450 already use CSU’s RiverPark campus, which inclues the College of the Arts.

The Ledger-Enquirer last year moved two blocks south to the Hardaway Building at 10th Street and Broadway, across from the RiverCenter for the Performing Arts.

This and other downtown growth is expected to spur more residential development and retail investment.

Ghosts of the past

Each new year resurrects ghosts of Columbus’ past, as homicide cases come to trial, and court appeals drag on.

The year 2017 will mark the 40th anniversary of the heinous “Stocking Stranglings” in 1977 and ’78, when seven older women were beaten, raped and strangled by a serial killer who seemed able to move like a phantom through the city’s Wynnton area.

In 1986, Carlton Gary was convicted in three of the seven cases and sentenced to die.

He was hours away from lethal injection in December 2009 when the Georgia Supreme Court ordered a stay and told a Muscogee Superior Court judge to consider DNA testing evidence.

Those tests had mixed results, with just one matching Gary to a strangling case in which he was not convicted. Attorneys since have argued over other evidence from the stranglings and continue to do so as Gary’s defense team tries to get him a new trial, or to have his death sentence commuted.

Yet another hearing is set for 10 a.m. Jan. 12 before Superior Court Judge Frank Jordan Jr., who in an order dated Nov. 17 scheduled an evidentiary hearing with closing arguments.

What they’re arguing over now is a police sketch of a rape survivor’s description of her attacker, rendered under hypnosis.

Late last year the defense and prosecution filed what they thought would be their final arguments on Gary’s motion for a new trial: The prosecution filed on Nov. 6; the defense on Dec. 11. All they had left to do then was wait for Superior Court Judge Frank Jordan Jr. to issue a ruling.

Then a relative found a briefcase that had belonged to Don Miller, a sheriff’s investigator who died in 1983, a year before authorities tracked Gary down and brought him in. Miller’s son-in-law turned it over to the sheriff’s office on Jan. 11. Attorneys inspected it Feb. 3. Court filings show what ensued was a heated exchange over whether Gary’s defense had ever seen the files. By August, both sides agreed that it had – 20 years ago, during Gary’s early appeals in the 1990s.

Gary’s lead defense lawyer, Atlanta attorney John Martin, finally decided just one document from the briefcase should be added to other evidence Jordan’s already to consider: the sketch. That’s what attorneys will debate in the next hearing.

As that death-penalty case lingers, another is headed to trial.

More pretrial hearings are expected soon in the double-murder case against Brandon Conner, charged with killing 32-year-old Rosella “Rose” Mitchell and her 6-month-old son Dylan Conner before setting fire to their 1324 Winifred Lane home.

Though Mitchell and her son were found burned beyond recognition, an autopsy later determined that Mitchell was fatally stabbed before the Winifred Lane fire. Dylan's cause of death is undetermined, but an autopsy showed the baby died before the fire. Prosecutors believe Conner set the fire to cover up the homicides, according to court testimony.

Defense attorneys have moved to suppress evidence patrol officers found on Conner after the homicides, when they noticed him sitting in his 2001 BMW 740i on Cedar Avenue off Wynnton Road.

The officers said they saw that Conner was “nervous, shaking, sweating profusely, and had blood on his face and clothing,” according to prosecutors.

After questioning him, police charged him with making false statements to law enforcement, and impounded his car.

Police by policy search suspects before putting them in a patrol car. Searching Conner, they found “a bloody glove, a bloody baby wipe, and two lighters in his pockets,” according to filings by District Attorney Julia Slater.

Investigators then got a warrant to search the BMW, in which they found “a knife and bloody clothing,” Slater wrote.

In moving to suppress such evidence, Conner’s defense attorneys have argued police had no probable cause to detain and search him, because he had done nothing to arouse suspicion, as his car “was lawfully parked outside his place of employment, Davis Broadcasting on Cedar Avenue in Columbus….”

Prosecution filings also show tests from the crime scene revealed evidence gasoline was used in the arson.

Conner’s is the second case in which Slater has sought the death penalty since she took office in 2009. The first case was headed to trial when the defendant negotiated to plead guilty in return for a sentence of life in prison without parole.

This story was originally published December 31, 2016 at 6:24 PM with the headline "What’s coming up in 2017?."