Prosecutors say DeKalb CEO Ellis’ lawyers disobeyed judge
Prosecutors pressing their case against suspended DeKalb County CEO Burrell Ellis are asking a judge to hold his attorneys in contempt of court if they don’t comply with previous rulings.
The DeKalb district attorney’s office wrote in court filings last week that Ellis’ lawyers have disobeyed Superior Court Judge Courtney Johnson’s decisions.
Ellis is accused of extorting campaign contributions from county contractors, and his retrial is scheduled for June 1 after a deadlocked jury forced a mistrial in October.
Johnson has prohibited Ellis' lawyers from claiming he was set up, from presenting examples of his treatment of vendors not named in the indictment and from questioning the authority of a special grand jury investigation.
Senior Assistant District Attorney Chris Timmons asked Johnson to uphold her previous orders, and he said Ellis’ lawyers repeatedly violated them in the first trial.
“By continuing to ask improper questions and testifying to inadmissible evidence in front of the jury, defendant and his counsel frustrated the entire purpose of the court’s orders,” he wrote. “… Further violations of the court’s orders should result in findings of contempt.”
Ellis’ attorneys biased jurors by trying to raise these points and forcing prosecutors to object, Timmons wrote.
“Unfortunately, defendant’s strategy succeeded in part, because some of the jurors told the state after trial that they felt that the state was hiding evidence from them by objecting,” he wrote.
Ellis has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
In previous filings, his attorneys said he didn’t intentionally threaten to end any contractor’s business with the county with the intention of collecting campaign contributions.
About the Author
Mark Niesse is an enterprise reporter and covers elections and Georgia government for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and is considered an expert on elections and voting. Before joining the AJC, he worked for The Associated Press in Atlanta, Honolulu and Montgomery, Alabama. He also reported for The Daily Report and The Santiago Times in Chile.
