The judge overseeing the massive Atlanta Public Schools racketeering case on Tuesday estimated next year’s trial could last up to six months.
“As far as I’m concerned we’re on schedule,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter said at the outset of a pretrial hearing.
Lawyers representing all defendants need to clear their calendars, Baxter said. “I need to have that done.”
Later in the day, Baxter signed an order setting the trial to begin April 21, a few weeks earlier than he had previously planned. He noted the venue for the trial has yet to be determined and will be announced closer to the day of trial.
Baxter then asked lead prosecutor Fani Willis whether the trial could take a year if the state calls as many as 400 witnesses. But Willis said she thought a half year would be enough time.
Thirty-four former APS educators and administrators are charged with conspiring to change answers on 2009 standardized tests so they could receive bonus pay and so schools could meet academic standards. Most defendants face other charges, such as theft by taking, false swearing, false statements and influencing witnesses.
On Tuesday, Baxter denied a motion by former educator Sandra Ward to suppress statements she gave a GBI agent. Numerous defendants have raised similar challenges, and this was Baxter’s first ruling on the issue.
Ward, the former reading coach at W.L. Parks Middle School, is charged in the overall racketeering case and is also accused of giving a false statement to a GBI agent.
At the conclusion of an Oct. 20, 2010, interview at her school, Ward signed a statement in which she said she did not participate in test cheating and did not assist with or have any knowledge of anyone changing answers on students’ Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests. Prosecutors allege that was a false statement, which carries punishment of up to five years in prison.
Ward’s attorney, Robbin Shipp, argued that her client had been told by former APS Superintendent Beverly Hall in a series of emails to cooperate with the state investigation into the test-cheating scandal. If Ward refused, she could lose her job, and for this reason her statement was coerced and cannot be used against her, Shipp said.
Ward, who took the witness said, said she believed if APS employees did not answer GBI agents’ questions, “we would be fired — or terminated, that’s the term they used.”
But Fulton prosecutor Brett Pinion noted that the GBI agent gave Ward a form that had the heading “voluntary,” and that she agreed to sign it on her own free will and without any fear or threat.
Baxter declined to suppress Ward’s statement, in part because she testified that she thought talking to the GBI agents was the right thing to do. Also, Baxter said, the law does not protect defendants who give false statements.
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