The judge overseeing the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial on Tuesday questioned the credibility of another government witness who entered into a plea agreement.
“He’s got a problem,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter said, referring to former Kennedy Middle School principal Lucious Brown.
In his plea agreement, Brown said he recruited three Kennedy employees to change students’ answers because he felt pressure from his direct boss, former regional supervisor Sharon Davis-Williams, one of 12 defendants in the case. But he did not say that when he testified on Monday, Baxter said.
Baxter made his comments before the start of Brown’s continued testimony in response to defense attorneys’ protest that the judge had called Brown a “hostile” witness on Monday and allowed prosecutor Clint Rucker to cross-examine him.
Attorney George Lawson, who represents former regional superintendent Michael Pitts, said designating a witness as “hostile” is putting a “toxic word” before the jury. Baxter said he’ll refrain from doing so in the future but said he would allow prosecutors to cross-examine their own witnesses if he believes that are not providing consistent testimony.
“If I think that they are lying, then the state can ask me,” Baxter said. “And I’ll say, go ahead and cross-examine them.”
Fellow defense lawyer Akil Secret, who represents former assistant principal Tabeeka Jordan, also told Baxter that Brown had followed the script of his plea agreement “to a T.”
“No, he hadn’t,” Baxter interjected. “He has not. I took his plea.”
After resuming his testimony on Tuesday, Brown told Rucker he thought he was clear on Monday about the pressure he faced. Pressure did come from his superiors, who gave him poor evaluations when his school’s students did not perform well on state standardized tests, he said.
6:20 a.m.
Former Kennedy Middle School principal Lucious Brown returns to the witness stand Tuesday as a prosecution witness in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating trial.
But a looming question is whether Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter thinks Brown is adhering to a plea deal the former principal entered into in January or whether he is giving testimony that conflicts with that agreement. On Monday, before court broke for the day, Baxter designated Brown to be a “hostile” witness and allowed prosecutor Clint Rucker to cross-examine him.
Earlier this month, Baxter stopped the clock running on probation sentences handed down to f0rmer Gideons Elementary School principal Armstead Salters and testing coordinator Sheridan Rogers after they testified in the trial.
The judge apparently believed they did not give testimony that matched what they swore to be the truth in plea agreements with prosecutors. In Salters’ case, prosecutors filed a motion asking Baxter to revoke Salters’ probation and sentence him to more severe punishment. Baxter has said he will take the matter up after the months-long trial is finished.
Brown, who pleaded guilty in January, was expected to be one of the state’s key witnesses against former regional superintendent Sharon Davis-Williams, one of 12 defendants on trial.
But Brown did not directly tie his former boss to the cheating, saying no one told him to correct wrong answers. Brown did testify, however, that Davis-Williams “knew my data,” suggesting that she knew Kennedy’s students were struggling and were unlikely to meet targets set by the district.
But his testimony did not match the language in his plea agreement, which said Davis-Williams put pressure on him to make sure Kennedy Middle’s students scored well enough on state tests to meet performance targets set by the district and the Adequate Yearly Progress targets set under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
When asked Monday, Brown said the pressure came from the students themselves and their parents who wanted them to succeed, and that he put pressure on himself.
“I did it,” Brown said of the test-cheating. “No one asked me to do it.”
Why did you do it? prosecutor Rucker asked.
“I didn’t want to be associated with failure,” Brown explained. “… It was truly a wrong and an immoral act.”
In January, Brown pleaded guilty to a single felony: interference with government property, his school’s standardized tests. He was sentenced to two years on probation and ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service and return $1,000 in bonus money. He was also sentenced under the First Offender Act, meaning if he successfully completes his probation he will not have a conviction on his record.
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