Elaine Boyer’s sentencing for swindling more than $90,000 from DeKalb County taxpayers has been put off again.
The onetime DeKalb County commissioner had been scheduled to learn her punishment on Wednesday, but her defense attorney, Jeff Brickman, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that it’s being delayed a second time by “mutual agreement” between the defense and the prosecution.
“Mrs. Boyer is continuing to cooperate with an ongoing investigation,” Brickman said. “The parties are working diligently to get the sentencing scheduled as quickly as possible.”
Previously, Boyer was to face U.S. District Judge Orinda Evans in December.
The second delay could stem from the time federal prosecutors need to establish if Boyer has provided "substantial assistance" in exchange for their recommendation of a lighter sentence, a condition of her plea agreement.
For her resignation, cooperation and contrition, the U.S. Attorney’s Office has already agreed to recommend that she be sentenced to “the low end of the adjusted guideline range” on mail fraud conspiracy and wire fraud charges. That would be 18 to 24 months, rather than the 40-year maximum sentence the combined charges carry.
Once a stalwart in the Northside conservative political establishment, Boyer has admitted funneling more than $78,000 to an evangelist posing as a legislative consultant, with him kicking about $58,000 back to her. She also admitted running up more than $15,000 in personal purchases on her county Visa card, a scheme first uncovered by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
After the first sentencing delay, the U.S. Attorney’s Office was still trying to obtain documents from the DeKalb County government, following a sweeping subpoena for records on 62 vendors paid by commissioners other than Boyer.
It is also still unknown what prosecutors intend to do with Boyer's alleged cohort, 72-year-old Rooks Boynton. The AJC's investigation found phony invoices from "The Boynton Report," complete with an old-timey picture of the Capitol dome and the slogan "Timely Reports from our State's Capitol."
“We have not made a decision about him, ” former U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said at a news conference in August.
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