Sonny Perdue’s hair-trigger temper has always been entertaining, so when I heard the former Guv was making a rare Atlanta public appearance, I figured it was worth a trip to the Fulton County Courthouse to see him testify in the school cheating trial.
That temper was evident in 2010 when he spoke to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s editorial board about cheating in Atlanta Public Schools. I wondered if the fire still smoldered within.
Back then, the Middle Georgia Republican was tired of being stonewalled by Atlanta school officials, leaders he had for years supported as they seemingly resurrected a moribund urban school system. But suddenly they seemed furtive and conspiratorial: the system’s unbelievably impressive increases in student test scores were being called just that: unbelievable.
In response, school officials called in some supporters and business community friends to “investigate” the allegations. They formed a “Blue Ribbon Commission,” because that color ribbon denotes excellence. Perdue thought the investigation was anything but that and called for his own probe, one with hard-nosed investigators and the force of law behind them.
Back then, Perdue told AJC editors that school administrators “cheated and robbed” students by pretending they were doing well. He got emotional as he conjured up a conveyor belt to prison:
“That is like cancer; it does not get better in and of itself when that student goes from the third grade, to the fourth grade, to the fifth grade, to the sixth grade. Those are the students you see lining up at Crim (High School) in the ninth grade and then, the next time we see them is in the Department of Juvenile Justice and in our corrections system. That’s what happens.”
As I entered the courtroom, a grouchy former Atlanta teacher who had admitted to cheating was getting grilled by several of the 12 defendants’ attorneys. They were picking at her character because she had told investigators various stories before fessing up to her wrongdoing.
“Lying is always difficult,” the teacher, Dorothea Wilson, said, cutting off an attorney who suggested it was her second-nature. No, she said, she was not proud of her very public dishonor. She said she felt “ashamed, humiliated, hurt.”
But Wilson’s travails did not end terribly, a defense attorney pointed out. She’s working for the Dougherty County (Albany) schools, once the second cheatingest district in Georgia.
Monday morning at court was a little discombobulated because Judge Jerry Baxter, who is presiding over this hot mess of a legal excursion, was holding a procedural hearing over a harebrained order he issued last week.
Baxter, who was obviously smart enough to graduate law school and snag a judging job, was not clever enough to tell Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard to get lost when the longtime prosecutor asked for an order barring Fox 5 from broadcasting a news story about the trial.
The prohibited story? It was about a private detective who investigated one school and who supposedly got an anonymous threat after he testified about it. Howard apparently thought the story might poison jurors, who aren’t supposed to be watching Fox 5 (or any other news) during their public service.
What Baxter did is called “prior restraint,” and while the story about the private detective was not exactly The Pentagon Papers — actually, it wasn’t even all that interesting — prohibiting stories in advance of publication or broadcast is a real no-no. Judge Baxter overturned his own order, admitting he was in the dark when it came to First Amendment law.
Also, I assume he knows he shouldn’t be hearing from one side — in this instance, the prosecution — without letting the other side know. That’s called “ex parte,” which is Latin for “sneaky.”
The trial, with 12 defendants and their legal counsel sitting at rows of tables like in a lecture hall, is entering its fourth month, and the pressures of the case — political, legal, racial, you name it — seem to be getting to the judge. His tired face sometimes resembles melting wax as the afternoons wear on.
Baxter blew up at one of the defense attorneys the day I was there, accusing him of being an F. Lee Bailey-wannabe for calling the judge out on the sneaky (er, “ex parte”) business and requesting a mistrial.
The judge brushed aside the request, calling attorney Scott Smith a “peacock” who had been “prancing” around trying to get the news media to notice him.
“I think you’re a grand-stander, ” Baxter told Smith. At least the jurors weren’t in the courtroom at the time.
But Smith and other defense lawyers are already, no doubt, putting the latest episode into their appeals satchel, one that seems to be getting full.
Oh, yeah, Sonny, I almost forgot. It all still bothers him, although he didn’t tear up on the stand when discussing the cheated youths like he did last year in an APS trial.
He testified this week that he kept pressing Supt. Beverly Hall to do something in the wake of the cheating, but "there was a growing defensiveness in her voice. I got the feeling she just wanted it to go away."
The Blue Ribbon Commission report, the one the school district touted as clearing it of serious malfeasance, had “the semblance of a coverup,” he said. It was an effort to “ignore the breadth of the problem.”
Atlanta is self-conscious and unashamedly boosterish, and Perdue said a number of business bigwigs were invested financially and emotionally in the school system and its remarkable progress. They wanted Perdue to sweep the scandal under the rug.
“There were significant efforts of persuasion not to mar the brand of Atlanta,” he said. Their message was loud and clear: “Don’t rock the boat.”
Last year, Perdue noted that some “very close friendships” had disintegrated because of his “pursuing the underlying truth of this issue.”
It’s always sad to see an ex-governor without friends. But sadder to think about all the kids used as pawns to make adult educators look good.
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