A recent story of a Grovetown man caught “upskirting,” or attempting to photograph women’s intimate parts in public without their knowledge, caused a stir in the community when the judge sentenced the offender to probation.
“He got off easy,” seemed to be the consensus on social media, which leads to the question of, ‘What exactly is probation?’
Probation is not a situation where the person is found innocent or “less guilty.” In fact, it is just the opposite. For a person to receive probation, they must admit their guilt, according to Columbia County District Attorney Bobby Christine.
Rather than a get out of jail free card, probation is actually a sentence with parameters set by the judge, and usually, the person has already been to jail and booked into the system, so they have seen the inside of a jail.
Probation without prison time is almost never given in the case of violent crime or a non-violent repeat offender and usually only involves misdemeanors.
According to Christine, the judge must weigh many factors. The biggest factor is: is this person apt to reoffend?
Another factor, according to Christine, would be the consideration of whether it may be more proper for the convicted to serve their time outside of prison so that they can work and raise money to pay restitution.
The judge may determine that the person needs a specific type of medical or mental treatment that is either not available in prison or would place an undue burden on the criminal justice system.
In the case of the Grovetown man, 51-year-old Robert Joseph Hall, Christine says that his office did not recommend probation, but there were factors in the case that may have swayed the judge to consider probation as a part of the sentence.
“You want to facilitate a guilty plea, and if probation meets the ends of justice, then it is an appropriate sentence,” Christine said.
In the Hall case, there was evidence that the accused had “upskirted” other victims; however, the alleged victims could not be identified and may not have even known they had been photographed. In that instance, it would be likely that much of the evidence would be deemed inadmissible in court since the defense could argue that the unidentified women gave their consent to be photographed.
In any event, Hall was sentenced to five years where he will have to report to his probation supervisor. He must wear an ankle monitor that tracks his every move, and he must register as a sex offender in the state of Georgia.
Should Hall, or any other probationer, violate their terms or reoffend, they must serve their remaining time, along with additional time given, in prison.
Probation actually has its origins in English common law going all the way back to the Middle Ages. Taken from the Latin word probatio — meaning testing period — probation was introduced at a time when harsh punishments were given for the pettiest of crimes, according to the New World Encyclopedia.
At the time of the Middle Ages, adults and children could be sentenced to years in disease-ridden prisons for stealing a loaf of bread or public drunkenness.
According to Sir Michael Foster’s Crown Law, first published in 1762, “light and sound sense have at length, though by very slow degrees have made their way to us; we now consider the benefit of clergy, or rather the benefit of a statute, as a relaxation on the rigors of law, a condescension of the infirmities of the human frame…we now measure the degree of punishment by the real enormity of the offense.”
The United States mostly operated off of English Common Law well into the 19th century. Massachusetts was the first state to codify a probation system in 1878 and the federal probation system was created and signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge in 1925.
“It is the opinion of your district attorney that not every single person that commits a crime needs to go to prison; in fact, I would argue that in most cases involving misdemeanors, probation is the appropriate punishment,” Christine said.
…And that is something you may not have known.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter and Editorial Page Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
