DeKalb County CEO Burrell Ellis will have another day in court.
Superior Court Judge Courtney Johnson has scheduled a June 1 retrial for Ellis, who stands accused of pressuring county contractors to donate to his 2012 re-election campaign under the threat of losing work. Ellis has denied the charges and pleaded not guilty.
Ellis’ first trial, which lasted six weeks, ended without a resolution in October when a jury couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict on any of the 13 counts against him after 11 days of deliberations.
The retrial go forward unless Ellis agrees to a plea deal or District Attorney Robert James drops the charges.
A gag order in the case prevents prosecutors and Ellis’ defense attorneys from commenting.
Ellis has been suspended from his elected position as DeKalb’s leader since July 2013. During that time, he has continued to draw his taxpayer-funded $150,000 a year salary, as required by Georgia law.
During Ellis’ trial, the jury of 12 women came close to convicting Ellis on three of the counts against him, according to the jury forewoman.
All but one juror wanted to find Ellis guilty of extortion for threatening to pull county business from National Property Institute if the company’s owners didn’t make a political contribution. And there were only two holdouts on two similar extortion counts involving another contractor, Power and Energy Services. Jurors were more evenly split on the other charges, including theft, bribery and perjury, the forewoman said.
Each side’s lawyers will be well-prepared for a retrial, said Philip Holloway, a Marietta defense attorney. They interviewed jurors after the mistrial, giving them a good idea which of their arguments were most persuasive.
“Just like a football team makes adjustments at halftime, the teams in this trial are going to make some adjustments in strategy based on what they learned,” Holloway said. “Of course, they could always reach a resolution between now and then, or the district attorney could drop the charges.”
Ellis, a real estate attorney, was the star witness in his trial when he testified.
Ellis told jurors he never punished contractors who wouldn’t donate, but he expected them to return his phone calls and treat him with respect. He acknowledged that his calls were always about political fundraising and never about county business.
But business owners from four companies testified that they felt threatened by Ellis’ aggressive fund-raising tactics. They said he used his power as the county’s chief executive to coerce campaign contributions.
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