The Fulton County judge who took over the sweeping racketeering case against more than 60 protesters who opposed the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center said he’s trying to plow through some of the issues that have delayed the case from reaching trial for more than two years.
The training center itself has already opened, but none of the defendants who were hit with conspiracy and other charges related to their opposition of the facility has gone to trial yet.
Superior Court Judge Kevin Farmer said in a hearing Wednesday he aims to change that. He ordered all 61 defendants to file individual motions by May 30, and said he will hold at least 12 separate trials.
“I have a 61-person elephant. Normally you eat the elephant one bite at a time. I’m going to try to eat the elephant four or five bites at a time,” Farmer told a packed courtroom on the first floor of the Fulton County Courthouse during a status hearing Wednesday.
The Georgia Attorney General’s Office announced the indictment in September 2023, but not a single defendant has gone to trial since then.
Defense attorneys complained about a new batch of evidence being released Wednesday, months after a deadline had already been set by the previous judge presiding over the case.
At a news conference after the hearing, defense attorney Xavier de Janon said the accused people’s lives are “still in limbo.”
Wednesday marked the first time the vast majority of the defendants were in court since they were arraigned in November 2023. It was also Farmer’s first hearing since taking over the case from Judge Kimberly Esmond Adams, who moved to family court at the start of the year.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Farmer was a prosecutor in Clayton County from 2016 to 2018. He has also worked as a public defender, conflict attorney and criminal defense attorney for 14 years in Fulton County and metro Atlanta. He became a Superior Court judge in 2019 and later began working in the family court division in July 2021.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Farmer said each defendant will have to file their own motions by May 30 for him to review on an individual basis. He also said every defendant will be severed and there will be at least 12 separate trials, where each trial will have four or five defendants. Farmer said prosecutors will decide which defendants will be grouped together.
The first group of five has already been decided, including three bail fund organizers who were arrested in May 2023 during a raid at a home on Mayson Avenue. Deputy Attorney General John Fowler said he expects the first trial to take four to five weeks, with the remaining trials to take the same amount or less time.
The first defendant set to go to trial was Ayla King, after filing the only speedy trial demand of the defendants. However, her trial was on hold until last week when the Georgia Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
A jury had already been selected for King’s trial, but the Court of Appeals ruled a new jury would need to be selected after Adams refused to allow the public to view the jury selection process.
It is unclear if King’s trial will continue to be first in line or if the group of five defendants will go first.
Not all the defendants were present in court, including two who are out of the country and are not able to return to Atlanta. Another defendant appears to be on the run, and a bench warrant will be issued for another after their attorney did not know their whereabouts, according to proceedings in court Wednesday.
De Janon, who is representing Jamie Mariscano, said the delays in the case have affected the 61 defendants’ lives, including Mariscano, who passed the North Carolina bar exam but is not allowed to become a lawyer because of the pending case.
“Sixty-one people’s lives are on hold because of a 109-page indictment that seemingly has more discovery, more investigations and more evidence,” he said.
Protesters gathered outside the Fulton County Courthouse calling for the charges to be dropped.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Defendant Sonali Gupta said being prosecuted for opposing the construction of the training center has made them seem like criminals, when, in reality, they are just regular citizens who want to live a normal life.
“They can turn us into criminals all they want, but I think we all know what the real criminal enterprise in this state is,” Gupta said after the hearing. “It is the state.”
Most of the defendants are not from Georgia. Some face additional charges of domestic terrorism and arson, but prosecutors dropped a number of money-laundering charges last year.
The indictment focuses on Defend the Atlanta Forest, an Atlanta-based group prosecutors allege is an “anti-government, anti-police, and anti-corporate extremist organization” with the purpose to occupy parts or all of the 381 forested acres in DeKalb County owned by the city of Atlanta and leased to the Atlanta Police Foundation in an attempt to halt the training center construction.
More than 220 overt acts are listed in the indictment.
The training center — pitched as a response to nationwide calls for police reform — opened last month with law enforcement already holding events and training at the facility, including an hours-long mental health fair Wednesday for city law enforcement and first responders to get information about resources available to them.
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