Ex-Gwinnett County Commission Chairman Charles Bannister has found another target as he seeks to lay blame for his botched 2010 arrest for driving under the influence: prominent developer and former Commissioner Wayne Mason.
In a federal lawsuit filed this week against Sheriff Butch Conway claiming the arrest was politically motivated, Bannister also says Conway and his wife, State Court Judge Carla Brown, steered a county contract to a probation company partly owned by Mason.
Moreover, in the suit he claims he was approached by Mason shortly after taking office in 2005. The suit says Mason “made it clear, explicitly, that if Bannister would use his position as commission chairman to Mason’s advantage, Bannister would be made wealthy.”
Such incendiary claims, leveled in a lawsuit aimed at someone else, did not sit well with Mason.
“Those allegations are a complete falsehood from an individual who left public office to avoid prosecution for perjury before a special grand jury,” Mason e-mailed when asked for a response by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Though he was exonerated on the DUI charge after blood tests showed no alcohol in his system, Bannister stepped down in 2010 after a grand jury investigation into land dealings.
Bannister claims he objected to the county contract for Southeast Corrections, owned in part by Mason, and cites the conflict as evidence of a grudge that Bannister says led Conway to engineer the DUI arrest.
Conway and Brown deny they tried to aid Mason, and the sheriff insists Bannister’s arrest was a mistake, not an attempt to embarrass him or drive him from office.
“There’s some allegations in there that just come from outer space,” said Conway, who is up for reelection this summer. “They threw in the kitchen sink.”
In the lawsuit, Bannister claims Brown approached him about awarding the contract to Southeast Corrections but offered no reason. He says he objected, angering Brown and Conway. Bannister also claims the couple wanted Southeast Corrections to get the contract “so that their political allies would benefit financially.”
Brown said Conway had nothing to do with the awarding of the contract and said she was just one vote among a group of judges who made the decision.
An April 15, 2010, letter from State Court Chief Judge Robert Mock to county commissioners supports Brown’s contention. In the letter Mock said he selected the company with the advice and consent of the other judges.
The Commission approved the contract in May 2010 on a 4-1 vote. A video of the meeting shows Bannister voted for the contract and raised no objections. Commissioner Mike Beaudreau voted against it because it did not follow standard county purchasing procedures.
In the lawsuit, Bannister also says he declined Mason’s earlier entreaty to use his position to the developer’s benefit. In the lawsuit, he says he ran for office because he opposed “subversion of the public interest to private profit of persons such as Mason.”
Walbert said his job is “not to prosecute Wayne Mason.” Instead, he said the incidents described in the lawsuit are part of a chain of evidence that supports Bannister’s claims of false arrest, false imprisonment and retaliatory prosecution. The suit seeks damages from Conway and two deputies.
It’s not the first time Mason has been accused of profiting from a political position. When he was a county commissioner the 1970s critics noted that county roads and water lines often crossed property owned by Mason’s relatives.
He endured 17 grand jury investigations over allegations that he traded his office for personal gain. He was never indicted and was cleared of wrongdoing in 1982. But he withdrew from a runoff election in 1980 amid the controversy.
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