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Please add profiles of those who were born, lived or died in Echols County, Georgia.
Official Website
Overview
On December 13, 1858, the Georgia General Assembly passed a bill establishing Echols County in honor of Robert Milner Echols.
Echols County has become notable in recent years as it has served as a place of banishment for many of Georgia's criminals. As the Georgia State Constitution forbids banishment beyond the borders of the state, officials instead ban the offender from 158 of Georgia's 159 counties, with Echols remaining as their only option.[4] Few criminals have been documented as actually moving to Echols. This is because almost all banished criminals choose to leave the state instead of moving to Echols County.
Banishment, including 158 county banishment, has repeatedly been upheld by Georgia courts. The first case when banishment was upheld was in the 1974 case State v Collett, when the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the banishment of a drug dealer from seven counties. The most recent time banishment was upheld, in 2011, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled it was constitutional to banish David Nathan Thompson (a mentally ill man who was convicted of firing a gun into a home, although no one was injured) from all but one county in Georgia.
Adjacent Counties
Communities
- Alexis
- Alexanderville
- Bamberg
- Barnes Still
- Bohannon
- Christian
- Dayton
- Finlayson
- Fruitland
- Haylow
- Howell
- Levere
- Mayday
- Mercer
- Moonlight
- Needmore
- Paul
- Potter
- Prescott
- Statenville (County Seat)
- Tarver
- Valentine
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