Biography
Thomas Webb Jurgens, 28, is a staff attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center (UGA Law School, class of 2019) who was serving as a volunteer legal observer at a March 5, 2023 protest at the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center ("Cop City") construction site in Weelaunee Forest. He was wearing a bright green/yellow hat — the standard identifier for National Lawyers Guild legal observers — when police arrested him along with 22 other demonstrators. All 23 were charged with felony domestic terrorism after protesters threw bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at officers. At the March 7 bond hearing before DeKalb County Magistrate Judge Anna W. Davis, Jurgens was the only one of the 23 to receive bond — a $5,000 consent bond with conditions including no contact with co-defendants and no presence at the site. He was held approximately two days. In June 2023, DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston moved to drop charges against Jurgens, but Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr overruled her. In August 2023 Jurgens was included in a 61-person RICO indictment brought by Carr. On December 30, 2025, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kevin Farmer dismissed the RICO charges against all 61 defendants, finding that Carr had lacked constitutional authority to bring racketeering charges without the Governor's written approval.
