A federal judge has put the government’s request for dismissal of wire fraud charges against a former city of Atlanta official on hold until after an August hearing before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, during which Mitzi Bickers attorneys will argue for dropping all charges against her.
In a late Thursday ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones granted a request by Bickers’ attorneys to delay dropping the charges so as not disturb oral arguments set for Aug. 12.
Federal prosecutors had pressed Jones during a Wednesday hearing to bring back the case to his court to dismiss the charges and oversee her resentencing.
But attorneys for Bickers, who had waited more than a year to get a date for her appeal, argued that returning the case to District Court risks forcing their client to start the process over again.
“If this was a year ago, I would absolutely say, ‘Yeah, let’s do that,’” Bickers’ attorney Marissa Goldberg said Wednesday in arguing against the case being heard in District Court.
Bickers, a get-out-the-vote guru credited with helping former Mayor Kasim Reed win his first-term in office, was convicted in March 2022 in connection with a pay-for-play contracting scheme that rocked City Hall. Jurors found her guilty on nine of 12 counts, including conspiracy to commit bribery, money laundering, filing false tax returns and the four counts of wire fraud.
She was sentenced to 14 years in prison in September 2022.
Prosecutors announced in June 2023 that they planned to drop the wire fraud charges after courts of appeal — including the U.S. Supreme Court — redefined conditions under which fraud accusations could be prosecuted. Federal authorities concluded Bicker’s failure to report outside income to the city of Atlanta, the basis of the wire fraud claims, may not have met those conditions.
“Although the Eleventh Circuit has yet to consider the issue, recent Supreme Court precedent and out-of-circuit decisions have rejected wire fraud prosecutions premised on lies which allow an employee to maintain employment and that are only indirectly related to the money or property obtained,” federal officials said in a filing at the time. “Because of these post-trial developments in the law, the government intends to seek dismissal of Bickers’s four wire fraud counts.”
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