Catoosa County State Court solicitor-general
It’s not unusual for attorneys to have had previous careers, but it might be hard to find one who’s taken Doug Woodruff’s path to the practice of law.
Woodruff grew up the son of a musician mother and a math and physics professor father. He and his three older siblings were homeschooled. “My parents were very strict about our education. They put up a separate building for it behind our house and school days ran from 8:30 in the morning till 4:30 in the afternoon – and that didn’t include music practice (piano and cello) and chores.” At times, cousins lived with the family and were also part of their homeschool.
At 15 years old, Woodruff embarked for Austria with his mother to further study music – his mother worked on a post graduate degree and Woodruff studied piano at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Künst Wien (University of Music and Performing Arts) in Vienna. He would spend the next five years in Austria. By his second year, he was fluent in German. He returned to the States at 21 years old and spent another two years studying at Southern Adventist University where he earned a BA in music and German.
With his initial education out of the way, Woodruff began his teaching career. He taught music, German and developmental math at Chattanooga State and music at Cadek Conservatory of Music. He also taught keyboard and voice at Collegedale Academy for a year.
Then engineering sparked Woodruff’s interest and he spent a couple of years working on a degree in that area but decided he didn’t enjoy it enough to make a career of it. “I was in my twenties and single, so it was easy to change directions and try new things,” he says.
During the 1980s, Woodruff joined the Fort Oglethorpe volunteer fire department – Station 6 in Catlett. “I got to know a lot of people in law enforcement while working with the fire department and got interested in public safety,” he says. His next move was to the sheriff’s department as a dispatcher.
A year later, Woodruff was chosen by Sheriff Al Millard to attend police academy. He became a deputy sheriff in 1991. “I fell in love with the law as a police officer.”
Woodruff also fell in love with a young lady – Terri Waters. The two married in 1992 and both pursued the next phases of their careers, Terri as a pediatric nurse practitioner and Woodruff as a lawyer. Woodruff earned his law degree from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1996.
Woodruff has been practicing law for 20 years now in a number of capacities, including private practice for a while, as assistant district attorney for the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit, and as chief assistant in the public defenders office. He’s worked as both a defense and a prosecuting attorney in cases involving everything from speeding tickets to murder. He’s in his third term as a member of the Board of Governors of the State Bar of Georgia.
In 2016, Gov. Nathan Deal appointed Woodruff solicitorgeneral of the newly formed State Court in Catoosa County. So, what is State Court and what does a solicitorgeneral do?
“State Court actually has little to do with the state,” explains Woodruff. “Each county can decide whether or not it wants an additional court, which is called State Court, to help take some of the load off its other courts – Probate, Magistrate and Superior.”
Some of the more common issues State Court deals with, says Woodruff, are domestic abuse, theft, shoplifting, DUI, and suspended license violations.
As solicitor-general, Woodruff reviews every finger-printable case before it proceeds to court. “My assistant, who is just great, gathers the information for each case into a packet and passes it along to me. That can include things like warrants, incident reports, tickets, bond documents, witness statements, photographs, video, audio interviews, criminal history, or evidence submitted by a defense attorney.”
Woodruff studies all materials related to each case to determine if there’s enough evidence to keep it moving through the system. He investigates charges, meets with the arresting officer and interviews witnesses. He can choose to “proceed as charged” or modify the case if the evidence leads in a different direction. Modification can include removing, reducing or adding charges. He can also choose to refer a case to Pretrial Intervention or to a Diversion Program. In some instances, he chooses to dismiss a case, though he says that doesn’t often happen. If the case goes to court, Woodruff is the prosecuting attorney.
“By and large,” says Woodruff, “the people who end up in State Court are not dangerous people – they’re basically good members of the community who have made mistakes. State Court offers some flexibility in helping people get back on the right track.”
In one case, Woodruff says family members asked the court to consider a sentence that allowed a defendant to seek rehabilitation for a drug problem rather than sit in jail. “We felt that was a reasonable request in that case, and we worked it out.”
“We will not hesitate to go after you if we need to,” Woodruff says, “but we’re open to listening. We want to deal with cases in a community-friendly way, a way that makes our society a better place for everyone to live.”
Another duty of the solicitor-general is to help crime victims. Woodruff says he’s excited about an upcoming addition to State Court – a victim witness coordinator who would concentrate on supporting victims of crimes handled in the State Court. “The court system can be daunting for anyone,” he says, “but especially so for victims who may be coming into the process already vulnerable and afraid as a result of the crime. The victim witness coordinator will be there to provide detailed information about the process and available resources, generally support the victim through the process, and be a conduit from the victim to the prosecutor.”
Asked about her boss, Woodruff’s administration assistant, Joan Edwards, says, “No matter who he’s with he’s always the same person – there’s only one Doug. You never have to worry that he’ll lie or back bite.”
“I’ve always worked hard to cultivate habits of honesty and good ethics,” says Woodruff. “It’s what my parents taught me and what I owe the public.”