Five years after the investigation began, former DeKalb County School System Chief Operating Officer Pat Reid and her former husband, architect Tony Pope, were convicted of racketeering for manipulating contracts to steer $1.4 million in illegal payments to Pope’s firm. Reid also was convicted of one count of theft for using government employees to make repairs to the county-owed Ford Explorer she planned to buy for her niece. Here’s how DeKalb prosecutors won convictions in this case.
What the prosecution wanted to prove: Reid and Pope violated an agreement before she was hired as COO that Pope would get no new contracts with the school district. They painted a picture of a couple went from financial distress when Reid accepted the job to a couple the could afford to travel to Italy and Costa Rica and to buy a$78,000 Jaguar. The couple's prosperity, the prosecution argued, resulted from Pope's firm, A. Vincent Pope & Associates, collecting more than $1.4 million for work he was not eligible to do. Reid, the prosecution argued, used her position to allow Pope to collect the fees.
What the defense argued: Reid and Pope did nothing wrong in regards to the contracts because their agreement with the district was only that Pope could not be the architect "of record" but he could be a subcontractor. They also argued that former Superintendent Crawford Lewis and the Board of Education signed off on the contracts. Then Pope's lawyer argued that over billing for renovations at Columbia High School was nothing more than a mistake, math errors made by an architect who considered himself more an "artist" than a businessman. Reid's lawyers argued she was misunderstood.
What helped the prosecution: Emails Pope wrote in regards to the McNair Elementary School project showed he was trying to keep his involvement in the project a secret. Other emails showed he had inside information he could have only gotten from his then-wife, the person in charge of the district's construction, that other competitors for the contract did not have. Consequently the contractor Pope teamed with undercut his strongest rival by $40,000 for a project that cost more than $11.9 million.
What helped the defense: Only one of the two uninidicted co-conspirators was called to testify. Jurors, speaking to prosecutors after the verdict, said they wanted to hear from contractor David Moody and they wondered why he was not called. They also said there was not enough evidence to support the charge that Reid stole from taxpayers when she bought the SUV for $5,000, one-third its value. The Explorer was returned after questions were raised.
What could hurt the case on appeal: A juror was removed on the second full day of deliberations after the foreman sent a note to the judge, without asking all the other members of the panel. In the note he said there was concern that this juror was biased because of a prior relationship with Moody. When she was questioned by the judge after she was removed, Georgette Prater said she had told others during jury selection that she once worked at a bank where Moody was on the board of directors but she never met him. She said she did not bring it up after she was seated. According to follow up questions with jurors after the verdict, Prater was forceful in her opinions and challenged those whose beliefs were contrary to hers. She told the judge the last vote that included her was 8-4 and she was one of the four.
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