At the end of his current term, Wilson will have spent two-thirds of his career in political office.
Handily winning his last four general elections, three of which included a challenger, Attorney General Alan Wilson is beginning his 14th consecutive year as the state’s top prosecutor.
Since members of the General Assembly can, by statute, obtain an opinion from the Office of the Attorney General for issues affecting their constituents, Representative Joe White recently exercised this privilege on behalf of parents who have found themselves on the extreme losing end of “family” court litigation. These are parents facing imprisonment for attorney fees, those restrained from seeing their own children for no discernible legal reason, and some who have been threatened with contempt charges if they choose to discuss their case publicly.
A complete copy of Rep. White’s request to AG Wilson was published by this news outlet: Mother will spend Christmas in jail. Does our system need reform? On Friday, December 15, 2023, Rep. White received this response to his request for an expedited opinion:
In what seems to be suggesting that Rep. White go pound sand, AG Wilson’s office claims that they have “no authority to direct the judiciary not to exercise its authority.”
But is the AG’s position a consistent one?
As regular readers will recall, there was a nationwide manhunt this past spring resulting from a judge’s order that set a convicted murderer free. Amidst an embarrassing debacle that implicated one of his own solicitors, the Office of AG Wilson quickly sought a copy of Judge Casey Manning’s secretive order that freed Jeroid Price. This was done, as outlined in the corresponding motion, so that the AG could “assess potential statutory and constitutional violations.”
We reached out to AG Wilson’s public information officer to understand how their Office’s stance on illegal judicial actions in the Jeroid Price case differed from potentially illegal judicial actions reported to be occurring in “family” courts. At the time of this publication, we had not received a response from the AG office.
One parent who felt particularly harmed by the inaction of this AG opinion is Isla. Using a pseudonym for fear of reprisal, she has been limited to supervised visits – when visits were allowed at all – with her daughter for the past 5+ years.
Isla is not under investigation for maltreatment of her child, does not have a criminal record, and does not have a history of substance abuse. Even so, her child has spent nearly half of her young life without her mother in it.
Inexplicably, instructions to Isla included here from an officer of the court have threatened her not to wave to her daughter, make eye contact with her only child, and not to send her flowers (or anything else) again. What has happened to Isla is exactly the type of unconscionable family court orders that AG Wilson’s opinion could have discouraged IF he had chosen to take up the issue.
A parent himself, General Wilson recently took to Twitter to tell his followers that he would not ‘stand by and do nothing’ when a threat ‘continues to engage in behavior that knowing harms our children and breaks the law.’
Parents across the state hope that General Wilson will remember his commitment and give the illegal orders coming from “family” courts some needed attention.