Court to decide where to prosecute DragonCon founder first
DragonCon co-founder Edward Kramer could learn Wednesday whether he will return to Gwinnett County to face multiple child molestation charges or be tried in Connecticut first.
Kramer, 50, of Duluth, was arrested Sept. 15 in Milford, Conn., on a felony charge of risk of injury to a child after he was caught staying in a motel room with a 14-year-old boy. Kramer was allegedly claiming to be the guardian of the boy, who had a role in a film being shot in Milford.
If convicted, he could be sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in prison on that charge alone. His association with the child was a violation of the conditions of his bond in Georgia, where he is accused of molesting three teenage boys and could face up to 60 years in prison.
Attorneys in Connecticut are in talks with Georgia authorities about where Kramer will be tried first. A pretrial hearing will be held Wednesday, said Kevin Lawler, a state's attorney for the Ansonia-Milford Judicial District in Connecticut.
"At this point, it's just a matter of deciding where it is appropriate for him to be prosecuted first," Lawler said.
Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter said he had no preference about the order of prosecution. However, he intends to seek a Governor's warrant to extradite Kramer should charges in Connecticut be dropped.
Kramer's bond there has been set at $50,000. His bond in Georgia was revoked last week.
Kramer, a science fiction author, was first charged 11 years ago in Gwinnett with molesting two boys who were 13 and 15 when he began dating their mother. A third boy came forward with similar allegations a few years later.
But Kramer's lawyers forestalled a trial indefinitely by presenting evidence that a degenerative spinal condition made him physically incompetent to stand trial. Kramer was under house arrest for most of the years following his arrest until 2008, when a judge ruled that he could travel as long as he reported his whereabouts on a weekly basis to the district attorney's office.
Conditions of his bond also stipulated that he have no unsupervised contact with anyone under age 16.
Kramer resigned from DragonCon, a popular sci-fi, fantasy and gaming convention held in Atlanta, in 2000.
