RETIREMENT ROCKER

District Attorney Jack Browning looking forward to new adventures awaiting him as term ends

All good things must come to an end. A truth found in a throwaway phrase people use to show their feelings in most cases about something they might have liked, but can live without. The phrase takes on real depth when examining the record of Tallapoosa Circuit District Attorney Jack Browning, who for the past three terms in office has spent plenty of time in the courtroom arguing on behalf of the people – and in some of the most heinous crimes that have been committed in living memory.

Now he is passing on the torch, keeping with a game plan to call it quits and join his wife Susie in retirement and let the next generation take their own path in the courts. Just ahead of the Christmas holiday, new District Attorney Jaeson Smith took the oath of office to get right to work on January 1.

Giving Jack and Susie the chance to finally begin their great adventure they’ve planned for years.

Who would have thought this is where Jack Browning would have ended up after all these years?

Once upon a time, Browning was living the dream of an “ordinary, average guy” as Joe Walsh would put it, but had aspirations for a career in music. He graduated high school and tried his hand as a touring musician while Susie was in college studying to become a teacher.

During the summers, she helped support the young family by working in a law office, where Browning got a taste of what life would be like as an attorney. He befriended her boss, and one day during the summer break he walked into the office to see Susie and stopped in the lobby and looked around.

“I said to myself “If this guy can do this, I can do this.” And I’d never thought about being a lawyer or anything like that,” Browning said. He didn’t quite hang up his guitar (he still plays locally, as many have heard) but he did get his new act in high gear with first getting help from Susie getting into college, then Law School at Georgia State University. When he graduated and was admitted to the bar, he noted that no one would have believed when he finished high school he would be an attorney.

Even his father was still skeptical.

“Right after I passed the bar, my dad he was sick and not going to live much longer. He got to see me get sworn in,” Browning said. “Not long after I asked my dad if he needed me to look at his will for him, and he said ‘Nah I’m going to get the attorney to look at it.’”

He ended up having a career no one could imagine. He was Haralson County’s attorney and practiced with Murphy, Murphy & Garner before he was the Chief Assistant Public Defender for the Tallapoosa Circuit following a long stint of practicing criminal law. When he was elected as District Attorney, he had reached a new apex. Not where he believed he would be when he started out, but one he believes has been his greatest success so far professionally.

“Every turn in my career has been “I didn’t see that coming. I wasn’t planning on that.” But as far as my career, this is the part that I’ve been most proud of, what we’ve done here,” Browning said.

Just in the past 12 years during his time as District Attorney, there have been plenty of challenges to face – even before COVID caused chaos in the judicial system. Browning took on the role of a prosecutor who was on the front lines with assistants, and took on the hardest cases of all to plea before a court: murders.

Over the three terms in office, Browning’s track record was zero losses in prosecuting homicides, all seeking terms of life without parole in keeping with a philosophy he still holds to this day: if you take a life, you deserve to have to spend your life behind bars.

Rarely has the death penalty been sought during his time: three cases in particular, one of those the murder of Detective Kristen Hearne. The two suspects in that case took plea deals and got life in prison without the possibility of parole.

It was one of his hardest to undertake. After all, Det. Hearne was a friend who had worked with the courts in her role as investigator for the Polk County Police Department.

“I still carry her voicemails on my phone to this day,” Browning said.

It was one case he said he wouldn’t have left his office for anything in the world.

“If any one particular case I wanted to get done before I left, it was that one. I wasn’t going anywhere,” Browning said.

But getting convictions in some of the most difficult cases aren’t what fuels his desire to act as lawyer for the people.

“(There’s) no greater reward than when that jury comes in and delivers a verdict of guilty. Not that instant, that’s not the great reward,” he said. “It’s when the family comes and hugs your neck and thanks you for what you did.”

“They aren’t thanking you for revenge, or he got his share. They are thanking you for telling their family member’s story, and letting the whole world know that their family member who was killed was important. Was important to a lot of people. Namely those people. It’s telling that victim’s story and having the family thank you for that.”

SUBSCRIBER VIDEO: Talking Points on Polk Today with Jack Browning

Packing up his office in the past weeks, he’s finished up the remaining business on his plate immediately, and got the chance to look back at the letters, cards, and gifts the families of victims have given him over more than a decade in office. The family of Ginger Blackmon – one of Browning’s final trials this year – gave him a Greg Maddox bobblehead for his work on the case.

“”All of that means something because it is a token of their appreciation and what I was able to do for them, that’s what matters,” he said.

He doesn’t see the gifts – even a plaque from one family for his work – or the accolades from organizations around the state as the yard stick for the work he has done. He never did the job for that reason.

Browning always saw his role as telling the stories of victims, and holding criminals who had committed the worst offenses to account. Yet as time went on and the rush from victory over the “bad guy” began to wear off, he began to find wisdom over time following prosecutions of those who face justice.

“I found myself a lot more retrospective and sad that they were. At some point that guy was a little kid, an innocent little kid and he grew up,” Browning said. “Maybe he had a bad life, maybe he didn’t. But everything was new to the world, and he would ride a bike and he would look forward to Christmas and stuff. But at some point, his life took a turn.”

“If you take someone’s life, you need to sit in prison for the rest of yours. I still feel that way and I don’t make any apologies for that. But I did find myself being a little more introspective about how did we get here? And it would make me sad because, dude. You just threw your life away. You threw your life away. And I hope it was worth it. Because I look at you and I see at some point in your past there was an innocent little kid who had whole life ahead of them,” he said.

Browning might be done for now, but who knows about the future. New District Attorney Jaeson Smith already offered him the opportunity to come work on cases at his leisure, and others have sought out his legal expertise to come work for their office too.

If he were going to go back, Browning made it clear that he would only work on murder prosecutions. No pleadings, no misdemeanors. Just murder cases.

“They interest me, fascinate me. It’s always about trying to build a house. There’s a lot of work that goes into it,” Browning said. “Maybe it’s high stakes… I don’t know… They just interest and fascinate me.”

Fortunately for his wife Susie, Browning’s only interest at this point is getting away from it all.

Jack and Susie have been planning their getaway in retirement for years, and are starting an adventure that’ll keep him busy for at least six months as they take on the open road in their immediate future.

First stop? Florida.

“Not because we want to see Florida, we’ve been there plenty of times. But because it is warm,” he said.

One thing that Browning said his wife wanted more than anything was “the old Jack back.”

“Well, for several reasons that isn’t going to happen. You aren’t going to get the Size 28 waist Jack back, and you’re not going to get the long haired playing music Jack back, because my hair is falling out faster than I can grow it,” he said. “But what I’m hoping I can deliver to her is the Jack that was able to have conversations, and not cross examinations.”

One thing he said was sometimes a negative about becoming a lawyer was that conversations can become akin to courtroom scenes on the home front.

“Law school rewires your brain,” he said. “They make you think like a lawyer unfortunately it extends beyond the courtroom, it extends into your relationships and everything like that.”

Hopefully, it is one part of the job that will stay with the office as he turns over role to Smith.

One thing Browning is thankful for throughout the past 12 years is support: from employees at the District Attorney’s office, from officials who set the budget and ensure they have funding to operate, from voters who have supported him through three terms in office, and his family through the years he spent going back and forth between two counties.

If it wasn’t for the two offices – one in Haralson and one in Polk – being efficient, he said he would never been able to be the kind of prosecutor he wanted to be: one in the courtroom handling cases, not an administrator. Especially his longtime legal assistant, Pat.

She worked side-by-side with Browning through 28 years of his career.

“It is because of her and other folks in the office that have allowed me to do it,” he said.

It wasn’t easy, the commute back and forth between the offices. The job also required dealing with two different sets of office cultures, two different sets of elected officials to seek help from with resources to do the work. Over time he learned the personalities of those he worked with, through that found how to make the most of his time in service.

But through challenges aplenty – high profile cases, getting the funding needed for positions in his office, and then the COVID pandemic – Browning still feels he is leaving the office better than he found it.

“Legacy, all this… which is whatever,” Browning said. “But you do start thinking about it as how you want to leave the office as the end of your time draws near. I think we left it better than we found it.”