It’s a fitting DeKalb story: just as Burrell Ellis enters the last month of his second term as the county’s CEO, the Georgia Supreme Court overturns his corruption conviction.
You might remember that the first week of Ellis’ second term in office began, in January 2013, with investigators carrying computers and boxes of files out of his home as part of a grand jury investigation.
Ellis spent half a year in office after that January day but was a lame duck flying into a thunderstorm. Soon enough he went from indicted politician to suspended CEO to two-time defendant (there was a hung jury) and finally, to state inmate.
The Supreme Court last week noted there was enough evidence to prove that Ellis perjured himself and tried to extort campaign money out of a county vendor. But it also said that he fought his case with one hand behind his back. The trial judge improperly limited Ellis' ability to introduce evidence and testimony of vendors who didn't donate money to him and were not pressured or threatened, the high court said.
The case will almost certainly not be retried, which means Ellis won’t be a felon. But it’s like winning an Oscar posthumously. The good news: you won an Academy Award. The bad news: you’re dead.
Ellis remains alive, but he’s already served eight months in the slammer, is financially and politically ruined and, to many, will forever be seen as a bum.
In the end, it’s pretty clear Ellis committed perjury while testifying before the grand jury. But whether he should have been put in the position of having to answer those questions — of having been investigated and charged in the first place — is another question.
And I think the answer to that question is the investigation veered off course and missed the point of what it was supposed to do.
The grand jury started in January 2012 to look into fraud and waste in the water department — of which there seems to have been plenty.
But somewhere during the water department probe, the investigation caught Kelvin Walton, DeKalb’s ethically ambiguous contract procurement director, in a lie. Soon, old Kelv, who was working as Ellis’ campaign compadre, was wired for sound.
Forget the seemingly rampant corruption in DeKalb’s Water World. There was a new bright shiny object to pursue — DeKalb’s wonky CEO. What better target than the county’s top dog?
There are 1,500 recordings of Ellis (most made by Walton) that showed he wasn’t always the mild-mannered fellow the public saw. When calling county contractors to hit them up for campaign contributions, Ellis sometimes took it personally when the contractor didn’t call back.
Asking contractors for campaign loot is not illegal. Just about everyone does it. But Ellis told Walton to let the contract of an unwilling contributor expire, which put him on thin ice.
Finally, after two tries, DeKalb DA Robert James got Ellis convicted. But overall, there was not much else that came about from the original investigation.
James didn’t talk last week. But last year I asked him why he didn’t nail anyone else in the water probe.
“It’s one thing to say you have a suspicion or concern,” James said. “It’s another thing to put it in an indictment and prove it.”
The statute of limitations ran out on some cases and he also said he was drinking out of a fire hydrant: “The allegations in DeKalb are coming faster than one can manage.”
DA James, too, was a big loser in all this. He was soundly beaten this year by an opponent who criticized, among other things, his lack of getting to the bottom of corruption.
Ellis last week held a press conference outside the office of his lead lawyer, Craig Gillen, and sounded downright ecclesiastical, “We have been strengthened by God’s presence as we have walked through the valley of the shadow of death.”
He should be able to get his law license back and return to closing some real estate deals and trying to rebuild his reputation.
“I don’t know where he goes from here but that’s the problem with political persecution,” said Andrew Young, the legendary civil rights leader, who as former Atlanta mayor knows well the ugly process of begging for campaign money. Last year, he asked the judge for mercy at Ellis’ sentencing.
“This trial should have never happened; it was too personal,” he said, before adding with a laugh, “To get non-biblical, it was chicken(bleep).”
I called Viola Davis, the citizen activist/muckraker extraordinaire who has worked to uncover waste, fraud and stupidity for years.
“This is a time for Burrell Ellis to count his blessings,” she said. “I honestly feel we have been cheated by them focusing only on Burrell.”
She has long advocated for RICO-like investigation into the water department, with its aging lines, sewer spills and a history of misspending. Several developments were recently put on hold because of the lack of sewer capacity.
Despite the lack of any such deep, organized investigative effort, she said, DeKalb is finally heading in the right direction with the election of a new CEO and the departure of commissioners Sharon Barnes Sutton and Stan Watson. Let's be kind — it's the holidays — and just say that Barnes Sutton and Watson were problematic.
“Look at the people they got off the commission,” Davis said. “Without a doubt, I’m feeling very positive about the future.”
I called Michael Thurmond, the heralded political jack-of-all trades (legislator, state department head, county schools chief, etc.) who will become the next CEO.
“The biggest challenge I’ll have is to heal this county,” he said. “I see no reason to retry Burrell Ellis a third time. I say that not only as CEO-elect but also as a citizen.
“There’s been an extraordinary series of events that have shaken this county to the core. We need to get back to the basics — of transparency, integrity and competency.”
That would be a good start.
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