By Michael Hall
The Brunswick News
BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Renee Mathis has learned to live with the fact that the man who pleaded guilty to molesting her daughter in 2008 had to serve just three years of a 15-year prison sentence.
It was not the kind of justice she wanted for 11 counts of child molestation.
But because she registered in a state notification program after the sentencing in April 2011 in McIntosh County Superior Court, Mathis thought she could keep tabs on Moses Lee Blackshear, 62, the paternal grandfather of Mathis’ daughter and the man who molested her.
So Mathis, a Glynn County resident, was surprised when it took a call from a McIntosh County sheriff’s deputy she knows to inform her that Blackshear had been released on probation Dec. 23 from Wheeler Correctional Facility, at Alamo, Ga., and was at home in Townsend, in McIntosh County.
Mathis said that during Blackshear’s 32-month incarceration, from April 2011 to Dec. 23, she never heard from the victim notification program, including when she thought she should have been told Blackshear had been transferred from a prison at Reidsville to the facility at Alamo.
“They told me nothing,” Mathis said. “I feel like the justice system let me down.”
The lack of timely notice to Mathis that Blackshear was being released from prison was the result of a lack of administrative coordination and the timing of his release right before Christmas, the state Department of Corrections said Tuesday in response to several inquiries from The News.
A department spokesperson had said the previous week that administrators were “unaware” if Mathis had signed up in the Department of Corrections and the Board of Pardons and Paroles program that would notify her when Blackshear would be released. The department acknowledged in a statement Tuesday that Mathis had registered, and blamed its failure to notify her on timing.
Although Mathis said she disagreed with what she considered to be a light sentence for a guilty plea -- Blackshear will spend the next 12 years on probation after nearly three years in prison -- she said she had no choice but to accept it.
And she has.
She says she has been praying for healing for her daughter, who is now in high school, and she has come to terms with Blackshear’s punishment.
“I understand. You do your time and you get out,” Mathis said.
She just wishes she had been informed of his release on probation with enough time to prepare herself and her daughter for it.
Mathis said she finally received a call from a victims assistance advocate with the Atlantic Judicial Circuit, which includes McIntosh County, and from Blackshear’s probation officer Dec. 26, when they got word of his release.
Even then, Mathis said she thought someone along the way had dropped the ball, because she thought the probation officer and assistance advocate should have known immediately of Blackshear’s release, as well.
In its explanation Tuesday, the corrections department said Blackshear’s release occurred more quickly than its notification system was prepared to handle.
“Notifications are normally programmed into the system by victim services staff 10-15 days in advance of an inmate’s scheduled release. Because Mr. Blackshear’s jail credit was calculated on Dec. 23, and he was subsequently eligible for immediate release, notification prior to his release by either the automated notification system or victim services staff was not possible,” Lisa Rodriguez-Presley, department public relations and information specialist, wrote in an email.
She said two automated telephone calls were placed to Mathis.
“The automated notification system made two calls to the number she registered with the victim information program on Dec. 2, one of which was answered by an answering machine.
“As a follow up to the automated notification, Ms. Mathis was contacted about Mr. Blackshear’s release by a staff member from victim services on Dec. 26. The delay was a result of the unusual combination of the immediacy of Mr. Blackshear’s release, and the closure of state offices on Dec. 24 and 25,” Rodriguez-Presley wrote.
Susan Megahee, another corrections department spokesperson, previously said that under program procedures, a registered participant is to be notified by a computer-generated telephone call if a convict is to be released from prison after completing a sentence, is released to begin court-ordered probation, or is to be notified within 72 hours after a parole board decision to grant release on parole.
She said a participant would not be notified if a prisoner is transferred between prisons.