More than 3 1/2 years after Pat Reid and Tony Pope were first indicted, prosecutors began making their case to a jury that the former husband and wife team had manipulated the DeKalb school district to pocket more than $1 million.
Chief Assistant District Attorney Kellie Hill said this morning the racketeering and theft case against Reid and Pope was about “marriage, manipulation and money.”
Reid was hired to be the school district’s chief operating officer, which put her in charge of construction, while she was also vice president at her then-husband’s architectural firm, A. Vincent Pope & Associates. When she was hired, Pope was already working on a project at Columbia High School and the agreement was he could finish the contract but would get no more of the school district’s construction business as long as his wife was COO.
Reid is accused of directing construction contracts — either directly or through someone else — to Pope and their friends.
Hill began her opening focusing on alleged “manipulation.”
“The evidence will show the manipulation of the school district’s trust, the manipulation of individuals and manipulation of contracts,” she said. “The evidence will show how they steered work to AVPA. The money they made as a result of the manipulation, the money they made as a result of deceptions, (was) to the tune of over a million dollars of taxpayer SPLOST money.”
A jury of 12 plus four alternates — mostly African-American women — was seated after three days of jury selection. The jury includes 10 African Americans and four white jurors. Nine jurors are women and five are men.
Reid and Pope have both said they are innocent. Former School Superintendent Crawford Lewis is expected to be a key witness against them as part of a plea agreement. Three years ago, prosecutors dropped one felony charge of racketeering and three counts of theft by taking and he pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor charge of obstruction for interfering with the investigation that led to the case.
Reid’s attorney Tony Axam told the jurors Reid would testify and “explain why she did what she did.”
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