The complex public corruption case against former DeKalb County Schools chief operating officer Pat Reid and her ex-husband, architect Tony Pope, will require patient jurors. Selecting those jurors will start Monday, eight years after prosecutors say Reid began illegally steering millions of dollars in school construction business to Pope’s firm.
Over the three years since charges were filed, the case has shifted dramatically: one key prosecution witness has died, the scope of the indictment has shrunk, prosecutors have changed. And just days ago one key defendant — former DeKalb school superintendent Crawford Lewis — made a deal to testify against Reid and Pope.
But it still promises to be a complicated, time-consuming trial. Jurors will have to sort through tons of paperwork.
“This is going to be a document-intensive case,” said former Dougherty County District Attorney Ken Hodges. “I’d want (a jury of) professionals. I’d want accountants. I want people with professional background who can process the numbers without getting lost.”
“Putting these cases together often takes time,” said lawyer William Hill, a former Fulton County Superior Court judge and previously the head of the criminal division in the state Attorney General’s Office. “You need a sophisticated jury.”
An extraordinary 750 summonses were sent to find 12 jurors and four alternates, who could be on duty quite a while. Before his plea bargain removed Lewis as a defendant, the judge estimated it would take a week to seat a jury and a month to try the case, even after years of hearings and at least one appeal that held it up for 18 months.
Just how much this trial will cost taxpayers is hard to pin down. The county already paid $100,000 to defend Lewis, until he found a private attorney who worked without charging him. Prospective jurors will be paid $25 a day until a verdict is reached. Then there are the salaries of court employees, the judge and her staff and many in the district attorney’s office who have worked on this prosecution over the years.
“It’s an expensive case,” DeKalb Superior Court Judge Cynthia Becker said during a pre-trial hearing.
Becker issued a “gag” order prohibiting attorneys from commenting on the case, so they could not discuss the effects of the delays or Lewis’ plea deal. Lewis will testify against Reid, the woman who had once been his primary person in overseeing millions of dollars in school construction; and her ex-husband.
They are accused of manipulating the system so that millions of dollars earmarked for constructions projects at Columbia High School and McNair Cluster Elementary School would go to A. Vincent Pope & Associates, businesses affiliated with Pope’s architectural firm or Reid’s friends. Prosecutors also say Reid also personally benefited from her job when she bought her county-issued car at one-third their cost and demanded vendors give her thousands of dollars in tickets to shows and sporting events.
Jurors will be asked to link individuals and their decisions that allegedly turned the school district into a criminal enterprise, and it will be complicated, said Jeff Brickman, who was a federal prosecutor and an assistant DA in DeKalb before going into private practice
"Most of these cases don't involve A piece of evidence or A witness," Brickman said. "Some cases aren't neat and tidy and tied up in a nice pretty bow."
While this case has been pending since the spring of 2010, its key architects have moved on. The two original prosecutors took jobs in Cobb County earlier this year, and the investigator who interviewed witnesses and compiled the reams of documents left the DA’s office in the summer for a position with the Department of Corrections. All three are expected to be called as witnesses for the prosecution.
The three assistant DAs now on the case are experienced prosecutors, Hodges said.
But all three are relatively new to the DeKalb DA’s office.
Kellie Hill came to the DeKalb DA’s office in April 2012 from Fulton County, where she prosecuted several high-profile cases. Christopher Timmons has been with DeKalb DA’s office since January, coming from Cobb where he was on a team that prosecuted white-collar crimes. Lawand Hodges, who was a Fulton County prosecutor and in private practice, has been on the the DeKalb DA’s staff since May 28.
Other changes have been in the indictment itself. There have been three versions, each one smaller, with fewer charges, than the ones before.
The first indictment, in 2010, named four defendants: Reid, Pope, Lewis and Reid’s secretary Cointa Moody.
Moody was not a defendant in the 2012 indictment, however, and she was expected to be a key prosecution witness against the others. The 51-year-old woman died of natural causes in January.
A third version of the indictment was returned July 18 with even fewer charges, fewer schools and fewer pages, down from 132 pages to 31.
Then on Oct. 16, with jury selection planned for 12 days later, things changed significantly again.
Lewis pleaded guilty to misdemeanor obstruction for trying to interfere with the investigation when he put Reid in charge of gathering records for the DA and pushed the DA’s investigator to put the case on hold for a while.
The guilty plea means Lewis is no longer risking a 65-year prison sentence, which he could have gotten if he was convicted of racketeering and three counts of theft. Those charges were dropped in the plea bargain. The most he could get now is 12 months in a local jail. “It’s not unusual for one of the defendants to be given an offer to resolve their case short of a trial,” Brickman said.
Lewis’ plea came the day after the judge prohibited prosecutors from using statements Lewis had made to investigators who were looking into his use of his district credit card while he was superintendent and his purchase of his county car at one-third its value. Lewis had said the DA should be investigating Reid and not him.
“This is an incredibly sweet deal for Mr. Lewis,” said attorney Page Pate, who is not affiliated with the Reid-Pope case. “Will he be helpful to the state (prosecutors)? I think the state hopes so.”
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