As Judge Jerry Baxter sentenced the last of the 11 former Atlanta educators convicted of cheating on standardized tests, he expressed dismay that it will continue to cost the community as most of them appeal their convictions and prison sentences.
After 10 months of trial, nine have said they will appeal but don’t have the money to pay for it. Even before the trial had ended, they had run out of money and the lawyers were not being paid.
The eventual cost is hard to pin down but many expect it to be well over $ 1 million just for the appeal.
The transcript alone will cost almost $400,000, to be billed the government rate since it will be borne by taxpayers.
One by one on Tuesday, the lawyers who had defended many of the 11 convicted of changing answers on the 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests stood up and told Baxter they couldn't do it any longer without getting paid.
So that would mean the appeals could be assigned to Fulton’s Public Defender’s Office, which will most likely have to hire outside lawyers.
A representative from the Fulton County Public Defender’s Office said the office had four lawyers assigned to handle appeals for all indigent defendants. She said the office was told they would probably need as many as 10 lawyers to handle the appeals if all are declared indigent.
“So this is just another monumental expense and problem that this whole thing has caused,” Baxter said.
The Georgia Public Defender Council could be assigned to represent some of the APS convicts and in those instances the lawyers would be state employees, already being paid by the state, or the agency would turn to its pool of contract lawyers, said Long Vo, acting director of the council’s appellate division.
If contract lawyers have to be hired, they could be paid $75 to $100 a hour, far less than most attorneys otherwise bill. Michael Mears, a former executive director of the council, said each person’s appeal would most likely require at least 1,000 hours to read the massive transcript of almost 10 months of choosing jurors and hearing evidence.
In the end, Mears said, the cost of APS appeal is “going to be enormous.”
As of Tuesday, all 11 convicted of racketeering and other felonies have been sentenced.
Ten were sentenced in April, but Baxter delayed Dunbar Elementary School first-grade teacher Shani Robinson's because she had just given birth.
Like her co-defendants, the 33-year-old mother was promised no prison time if she admitted in open court that the jury was correct and that she was guilty. She declined the offer even though the admission would assure her she could stay at home with her baby.
So Baxter sentenced her to a year in prison to be followed by four years on probation. Robinson, like her co-defendants, is free on bond while she appeals, which could take about three years, Baxter said.
The judge also punished a 76-year-old former principal who was sentenced to two years on probation in exchange for a guilty plea to a less serious charge and a promise to testify truthfully, which he did not do.
Former Gideons Elementary School principal Armstead Salters pleaded guilty in December 2013 to making false statements and writings. He testified at his plea hearing at that time that he orchestrated cheating at the behest of former Superintendent Beverly Hall, who died before she could be tried for racketeering, and regional administrator Michael Pitts, who was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison.
But when he testified at the trial last October, Salters recanted all of that.
Still prosecutor Clint Rucker suggested that Salters not be punished beyond his probation sentence.
It’s over, Rucker said.
“It’s not over,” Baxter bellowed. “He lied on the witness stand and it made me sick.”
Salters will spend eight weekends in the Fulton County Jail.
“I’m sorry for all my actions in regards to this cheating thing but most especially my actions in the court,” Salters, principal at Gideons for three decades, read. “I have no explanation for my statements except to say I made some bad decisions under the stress of the moment.”
Robinson didn’t speak but her lawyer said afterwards that she didn’t take the offer because she didn’t think she had committed a crime. Robinson’s mother and sister pleaded with Baxter to let her serve her sentence in home confinement so she could raise her son.
Baxter said that would require an admission of guilt.
“I reached out to your daughter through her attorney and she rejected her avenue out of this mess,” Baxter told Robinson’s mother.
Tuesday's court session capped what began in 2008 when The Atlanta Journal-Constitution broke the first of several stories highlighting suspect test scores in Atlanta Public Schools and other Georgia districts.
In total, 35 former educators were indicted. Two of them died of cancer before they could be tried, 21 pleaded guilty to lesser charges before the trial's start and 11 were convicted; two of them avoided prison by admitting in court before sentencing that they were guilty.
Only one of the original 35 was acquitted.
Baxter reminded those in the courtroom Tuesday that all the time and money the trial has taken could have been saved had folks admitted to what they had done. He said he was befuddled as to why the former educators, even after they were convicted and looking at years in prison, refused to take an offer that would ensure their freedom by simply admitting their roles in the standardized test cheating.
“I don’t know if people just drank the Kool-Aid,” Baxter said. “Going over the transcript, the evidence is overwhelming. It’s an ugly, ugly chapter.”
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