State Rep. Tyrone Brooks, accompanied by former Gov. Roy Barnes as his attorney, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges he bilked two charities out of hundreds of thousands of dollars and evaded taxes.
Brooks, a 67-year-old Atlanta Democrat, was allowed to remain free on a $25,000 unsecured bond.
He is expected to rebut the charges Thursday at a news conference at Barnes’ Marietta law office. The U.S. Attorney’s Office held a news conference on the indictment last week, Barnes said. “For every action, there is a corresponding or even greater reaction.”
Barnes told U.S. Magistrate Alan Baverman that he was representing Brooks for free. The former governor then asked the judge to appoint a lawyer to assist him with Brooks’ defense.
But Baverman said he wasn’t sure that the Criminal Justice Act, which provides attorneys free of charge for indigent defendants in federal court, allowed him to appoint a lawyer for someone who already had counsel. The judge said he would deny the request for now, but instructed Barnes to file a written motion by next Wednesday detailing the expected cost of Brooks’ defense.
Barnes and Brooks, longtime colleagues and allies at the state Capitol, laughed aloud as they traded stories seated at the defense table waiting for the hearing to begin. Brooks’ trial is expected to take at least four weeks, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kurt Erskine said.
Barnes wasted little time fighting the charges. Late Tuesday, he filed a motion challenging the composition of the federal grand jury that handed up the indictment, contending that African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Americans are under-represented in the overall selection pool. Barnes said this occurs because grand jurors are pulled from voter-registration records and not from the general population.
“The result of this skewed jury pool had the effect of over-representing whites by 6.35 percent and under-representing persons of color,” the motion said. “This defect is especially harmful to Tyrone Brooks whose life was spent advocating for the exact groups who are under-represented and fighting those who are over-represented.”
Barnes told Baverman that litigating the grand jury issue would require testimony from experts, who will need to be paid.
Last week, the grand jury in Atlanta handed up a 30-count indictment that alleged Brooks funnelled almost $1 million in donations to the charities into his personal accounts and used the funds to pay expenses such as home repair, lawn service, credit card bills and entertainment.
The indictment said Brooks, first elected to the state House in 1980, misappropriated funds from the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials, of which he served as president, and Universal Humanities, an organization he established in the early 1990s to combat illiteracy in disadvantaged communities.
Brooks was required to surrender his passport and instructed not to travel outside Georgia without permission from the court.
Baverman also ordered Brooks not to speak with people who may be victims or witnesses in the case and directed prosecutors to provide Barnes a list of potential witnesses they are most concerned about.
The judge, once a respected criminal defense attorney, also cautioned Brooks, who has already given a number of statements to the news media since his indictment, against undermining Barnes' efforts to defend him.
“There are risks involved in speaking about the matter,” Baverman said.
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