A former North Georgia judge indicted on federal civil rights charges pleaded not guilty Thursday and then issued a statement denying wrongdoing.
“I’ve certainly not sexually harassed anybody or planted any drugs,” Bryant Cochran, the former chief judge of Murray County’s Magistrate Court, said after a brief first appearance hearing.
Cochran, 44, of Chatsworth, was indicted this week on charges that he conspired to plant drugs on a woman shortly after she had publicly accused him of propositioning her in his chambers.
Cochran served as a judge from early 2004 until August 2012, when he resigned in the face of an investigation by the state Judicial Qualifications Commission. The GBI and FBI then began their own investigation, which led to this week’s indictment. Cochran is also charged with sexually assaulting a court employee over a six-year span, witness tampering and conspiring to distribute methamphetamine.
Cochran entered the courtroom with his wrists in handcuffs and his legs in shackles. He formally entered his plea of not guilty and was released on a personal recognizance bond.
Asked how it felt to appear shackled before a federal magistrate, Cochran said, “I’m no better than anybody else. … It didn’t bother me. It’s the beginning to an end.”
Cochran is accused of helping frame Angela Garmley of Chatsworth shortly after she publicly accused him of propositioning her when she appeared before him trying to take out a warrant against three people she said had assaulted her.
On Aug. 14, 2012, Garmley, her husband and another man were arrested at a traffic stop where a Murray County Sheriff’s deputy found a metal box that contained methamphetamine and was magnetically attached to the bottom of the car. But the charges were dismissed after a GBI investigation determined the drugs had been planted.
Former Murray Sheriff’s Capt. Michael Henderson, who is Cochran’s cousin; the arresting officer, ex-deputy Joshua Greeson; and Cochran’s handyman, Clifford Joyce, who planted the drugs under the car, have already pleaded guilty to their roles in the case.
The Garmleys sat in the front row of the courtroom to watch the proceedings.
“They’re not giddy or excited about it,” their lawyer, McCracken Poston, said. “This is a situation they wish had never happened in the first place.”
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