Former DeKalb School Superintendent Crawford Lewis filed a motion Tuesday to withdraw his guilty plea if the judge in his case refuses to honor his agreement with prosecutors. The agreement he had was for a sentence of 12 months probation, in exchange for admitting to misdemeanor obstruction and testifying.
And if Superior Court Judge Cynthia Becker declines, Lewis wants her to step away from the case so another judge can resolve the matter.
The motion to for an emergency hearing to argue the request was filed a day after Becker sentenced Lewis to 12 months in jail — instead of probation as prosecutors recommended — for trying to sidetrack or stop the District Attorney’s Office investigation of him and his former chief operating officer, Pat Reid.
Becker stunned Lewis Monday when she sentenced him to jail, then refused to let him withdraw the guilty plea he entered in October, less than two weeks before he was to go on trial on felony racketeering and theft charges along with Reid and her ex-husband, architect Tony Pope.
Lewis was handcuffed and taken to jail Monday. His lawyers have asked Becker for a hearing Wednesday but none had been scheduled Tuesday evening.
Reid and Pope were convicted last month, and on Monday Reid was sentenced to 15 years in prison and 10 years probation for racketeering and theft, and Pope was sentenced to eight years in prison and 12 years probation for racketeering.
When she sentenced Lewis at the same hearing, Becker told defense attorney Michael Brown that the former superintendent’s plea was offered without assurances of what sentence the judge would impose.
Brown wrote in the court document filed Tuesday that Becker had signed off on the sentence that was part of the plea agreement, in a meeting in her chambers the day before the plea was entered. The only condition was that Lewis had to testify for the prosecution against Reid and Pope.
“At the conclusion of the conference, the court (Becker) stated that, although she did not necessarily like the negotiated plea, she would accept the negotiated plea and recommended sentence. The court did not state that she was reserving any authority to deviate from that recommended sentence,” the motion said.
Reid and Pope were convicted of manipulating construction contracts to benefit themselves. One condition of Reid’s employment in 2005 was that Pope, her husband then, could finish a contract he had for renovations on Columbia High School but could get no more district work as long as Reid was in charge of the district’s construction program. Pope received additional contracts for the Columbia renovation, however, because Reid listed the new work as addendums. He also worked behind the scenes on another project, renovations at McNair Elementary School Cluster.
Prosecutors said the district paid Pope more than $1 million for work he was not entitled to get.
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