The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has provided breaking news and in-depth analysis on the racketeering case against Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill since his 2012 indictment. Be sure to visit ajc.com for updates and analysis as jurors weigh the evidence on its way to a verdict.
It’s now up to nine men and three women: will Victor Hill continue to be sheriff of Clayton County or will he be a convict.
Ten days after the first prospective juror was questioned, the mostly male, mostly African-American jury began deciding Hill’s fate. Jurors deliberated two hours Wednesday before they were sent home for the night.
Hill is charged with 27 counts of racketeering, theft by taking, making false statements and violating his oath of office. A single guilty verdict on any of the 27 charges will be enough to end his law enforcement career and he could be immediately taken into custody. A not guilty verdict frees Hill, who took his oath of office in January, to finally serve without the cloud of more than two dozen criminal charges hanging over him.
Jurors will ultimately decide if Hill’s unauthorized use of his county issued credit card, valued at about $1,000, and if his use of county cars and gas to take personal trips, which prosecutors support with stacks of documents, amounts to public corruption.
In closing arguments, Special Assistant District Attorney Layla Zon, urged jurors to find Hill guilty and to send a message that elected officials must be held accountable for breaking faith with voters and using their public offices for personal gain. Defense attorney Drew Findling countered that the twice-elected Hill, who returned to office while under criminal indictment last year, has earned the trust of voters and is being victimized by political enemies.
Zon’s and Findling’s approach in closing arguments were as different as their views of this case.
Findling raced around the courtroom, shouting and sometimes mocking witnesses he called “liars.” Twice Findling went to Hill sitting at the defense table to get him to stand and once pulled open his jacket to display Hill’s badge on a chain around his neck.
Where Findling was animated, Zon was methodical. She used a power point presentation to tie together witnesses and documents that seemingly were unrelated.
“There was a lot of emotion in that argument,” Zon said of the defense. “Why? They don’t want you to decide this based on the law. Whether you like him as sheriff is not what this case is about. It’s about whether he broke the law.”
By the time the case went to the jury, 10 of the original 37 charges in the indictment returned in January 2012 had been either dismissed or dropped.
But a picture of the sheriff emerged during the trial, a picture of a wounded and depressed Hill following his 2008 election defeat who used his final months in office to travel on taxpayers’ dimes.
Prosecutors say Hill drove the county-owned Ford Excursion on vacations to Helen in the North Georgia Mountains and to a resort in South Florida. He also allegedly took three 914-mile trips to Biloxi, Miss., and one to Little River, S.C., to gamble. Each time, he took two Sheriff’s Office employees, one described as a “lady friend,” and he would gas up at the county’s pumps beforehand. All but one of the trips came after he lost the Democratic primary runoff on Aug. 5, 2008.
In the first week after losing, Hill put 1,660 miles on the SUV.
And the indictment also says he used his county credit card to buy electronics and gas while on those trips. Hill is accused of lying in order to put his travel companion, former sheriff’s department employee Beatrice Powell, on paid administrative leave and then on sick leave so she could collect her county pay while traveling with him.
Other theft charges accuse Hill of requiring his then-spokesman Jonathan Newton to work on his autobiography during county work hours and that he signed off on Newton getting money back from the printer of a newsletter to supplement Newton’s county salary.
Defense attorney Findling said politics was the reason for the criminal case. Former Sheriff Kem Kimbrough started it in 2011 after Hill had said he was running for sheriff again. The investigators assigned to the case, Findling said, had been fired on Hill’s first day in office in his first term and wanted payback.
“Everybody’s got an agenda,” Findling said.
But Zon said the reason for the investigation was irrelevant.
Hill won back the office last year, despite the pending charges.
“The people knew what they wanted to do with crime,” Findling said.
But Hill would automatically be out of the office if he is convicted of any charge, Findling told the jurors.
The chief deputy would fill the role of sheriff until a special election can be held, according to the law.
Countered Zon, a conviction would send a message “to the people in this county we’re not going to put up with corrupt thieves in people who are supposed to protect us.”
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