Fired Employee Settles Lawsuit With Embattled Coroner

DOUGLASVILLE, GA - A fired employee with the Douglas County Coroner's Office has settled a lawsuit he filed against his controversial boss.

Former Chief Deputy Coroner Wayne Rogers was seeking compensation for the period he would have worked - the current term plus one more - he told the Douglas County Sentinel. Rogers said the agreement is what his original contract would have been for one year

The dispute stemmed from death certificates showing where, when and how someone died and who pronounced the death. Rodgers said Godwin was signing them although she wasn't at a death scene. Rogers claimed he was fired because he showed office files to a county commissioner.

“I was satisfied with that aspect of it," he told the Sentinel about the lawsuit's outcome,"but I think there’s yet more retribution [for Coroner Renee Godwin] to come.”

Related: Douglas County Coroner Faces Removal From Office; What’s Next

Godwin's job has been under attack and her job performance controversial for some time. One of her earliest requests was an 81 percent budget increase, including bumping her $32,599 part-time salary to $58,000 a year. Commissioners rejected that idea.

She would not comment on the Sentinel's report.

In October, a Douglas County Grand Jury recommended that Godwin be removed from office “due to lack of knowledge of the responsibilities of a coroner.” While her biography on the Douglas County website says Godwin has 27 years of experience working in law enforcement, there is no mention of medical training.

The nonbinding grand jury report cited the smell of decaying bodies seeping through the HVAC system into the county museum, mismanagement of the coroner's office and failure to report child deaths in a timely manner as problems for which Godwin was responsible, and that should lead to her removal. The failure to report child deaths has been since been remedied, the report said.

The grand jury's report was forwarded to the Georgia Coroner's Training Council, which by a new law has the right to remove coroners from office. The council has declined to seek Godwin's ouster. Godwin would be the first in the state to be removed.

Edgar Perry, the coroner in Turner County, chairs the training council, and says his group has turned the grand jury's report and its investigation over to the state attorney general's office. A spokesperson there said she would not comment on an open case.

Perry said last month that "most of what we found were local issues having to do with the county commissioners." He said some of it was budgeting but wouldn't elaborate because he didn't have the report in front of him.

Godwin is up for re-election in 2020. Another former employee is running against her.

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