The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Feds: Hill should get a 46-month sentence
Former Clayton sheriff convicted of violating detainees’ civil rights.
Former Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill, who fashioned himself a super hero and incorporated the Batman symbol in social media posts about arrests made on his watch, could spend almost four years in jail after he became what he often punished: a convicted felon.
Federal authorities, in a sentencing memorandum filed Tuesday, recommended a 46-month prison sentence for the Clayton lawman, who was convicted in October of violating the civil rights of detainees of the south metro Atlanta jail by strapping them in restraint chairs as a form of punishment.
Restraint chairs are only allowable when used to keep a prisoner from harming themselves or someone else.
“Such a sentence is appropriate under the sentencing factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) and accounts for Mr. Hill abusing his authority and physically harming numerous pre-trial detainees under his care in the Clayton County Jail,” the memo said.
Hill’s attorney Drew Findling could not be immediately reached for comment. Findling has said in the past that he plans to appeal Hill’s conviction.
The sentencing, which will be carried out Tuesday before U.S. District Court Judge Eleanor Ross, is a fall from grace for Hill, who at one time often bragged about making jail inmates face the toughest paramilitary facility in the country.
Hill has been sheriff in Clayton County for almost 15 years, winning his most recent reelection in 2020. He has broad support among many in Clayton who see him as a leader who remembered to send cards to residents on their birthdays, attended ice
cream socials in neighborhoods and who could be counted on to get roadside garbage picked up when other officials wouldn’t.
But federal prosecutors showed a darker side of Hill when they filed charges against him in April 2021. They alleged that he violated the rights of four detainees by strapping them to restraint chairs, including a 17-year-old, who was forced to sit in the device for hours and urinated on himself because jail staff refused him access to a restroom.
Another detainee, a landscaper from Butts County, was put in the chair after he argued with Hill on the phone over money a Clayton deputy owed for yard work. Instead of allowing the deputy to resolve the issue, Hill swore out a warrant against the landscaper.
Over the next several months, prosecutors added more charges — the final total was seven — that described a lawman who was allegedly out of control and used his position to abuse detainees who failed to obey his directives to the letter. Hill and the sheriff ’s office also faces multiple civil lawsuits stemming from use of restraint chairs.
It was not Hill’s first time on the other side of the law.
He was indicted in 2012 by a Clayton County grand jury on 32 felony charges, including racketeering, theft by taking, making false statements and violating his oath of office.
A Clayton jury cleared him of all charges after seven days of testimony and just one day of deliberations.
In 2015, the former sheriff was charged with reckless conduct after shooting a woman in the abdomen at a model home in Gwinnett County. Both Hill and the woman said it happened while they were practicing “police tactics.”
Hill pleaded no contest to the charge in 2016.
Gov. Brian Kemp suspended Hill from duty in June 2021 after a three-person panel concluded that Hill could not execute the duties of his office while under investigation by federal prosecutors on the civil rights violations indictment.
Hill was convicted on six of the seven charges in October after four days of intense deliberations by a federal jury that initially appeared deadlocked on the accusations.
Hill took the stand in his own defense, arguing that he used the restraint chairs not to abuse, but to protect both jail staff and detainees if they showed aggressive behavior when they arrived at the jail. He said the devices could also be necessary if the actions that lead to a detainee’s arrest suggested they might be volatile once inside the facility — something he called “pre-attack indicators.”
“The best proactive use of force is restraint,” he said.
Much of the impasse during the jury’s deliberations was laid at the feet of juror Graham Carter, whose ability to follow instructions was questioned by some of his colleagues.
After the trial, Carter said he held Hill in great esteem and that he did not think the sheriff was a man of malicious intent. But he agreed to convict Hill because he violated the law.