Ex-Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill released from federal prison early

CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. - Former Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill was released from a low-security Arkansas prison after serving less than a year on federal civil rights charges.

Hill began an 18-month sentence back on May 15. It would have put the 58-year-old Hill behind bars at the Forrest City Federal Correctional Institution in Arkansas until November 2024. 

According to the Federal Bureau of Prison, Hill was transferred from the prison to community confinement, which will be overseen by the bureau's Atlanta Residential Reentry Management Office. Community confinement means that Hill is either under house arrest or at a halfway house until his projected release data on April 26, 2024.

Following his full release in April, the former sheriff will be on 6 years of supervised probation and must also complete 100 hours of community service.

Victor Hill found guilty of violating constitutional rights

In October 2022, a federal jury in Atlanta convicted Hill on six of seven counts of violating the constitutional rights of detainees inside the Clayton County Jail from December 2019 to May 2020 by ordering them held in restraint chairs for hours shortly after their arrests as a form of punishment.

His trial included about a week of testimony from more than three dozen witnesses, including the men who were restrained. Prosecutors said Hill ordered detainees strapped into restraint chairs at the county jail for hours even though they posed no threat and complied with deputies’ instructions. The use of the chairs was unnecessary, was improperly used as punishment and caused pain and bodily injury in violation of the civil rights of seven men, prosecutors argued.

The indictment claimed Hill violated his own policy that a restraint chair can be used on a violent or uncontrollable person to prevent injury or property damage if other techniques don’t work and that the chair "will never be authorized as a form of punishment."

In one case mentioned in the indictment, Hill was accused of calling a landscaper who had a dispute with one of the department's deputies. The indictment says Hill instructed the deputy to take out a warrant for harassing communications and then allegedly sent a fugitive squad to try to arrest the man on the misdemeanor charge. The man hired a lawyer and cooperated with jail staff before Hill ordered him placed in the restraint chair, the indictment said.

A man arrested in May 2020 for speeding and driving with a suspended driver’s license was also strapped into the restraint chair on Hill’s orders, according to the indictment. A sheriff’s office employee then put a hood over the man’s head and he was hit twice in the face, causing him to bleed, the indictment read.

The jury did not find Hill guilty on the fifth count, arguing that prosecutors did not provide direct proof that Hill gave the order to restrain the suspect, as they did with other detainees. 

Hill's previous legal troubles 

Hill had been a magnet for controversy from the time he first took office as Clayton County sheriff in 2005. He fired 27 deputies on his first day, though a judge later reinstated them. He used Batman imagery in campaign ads and on social media and called himself "The Crime Fighter," sometimes using a tank his office owned during raids.

He failed to win reelection in 2008 after his first term and was under indictment — accused of using his office for personal gain — when voters returned him to office in 2012. He stood trial in that corruption case, and jurors acquitted him on all 27 charges.

He pleaded no contest in 2016 to a reckless conduct charge after he shot and injured a woman in a model home in Gwinnett County, northeast of Atlanta. Both he and the woman said the 2015 shooting was an accident that happened while they practiced police tactics.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.