Former DeKalb County CEO Burrell Ellis, imprisoned for more than five months since his conviction on perjury and attempted extortion, may win parole even before his appeal is heard.
Ellis, who was sentenced to 18 months in state prison, has been notified that he could be paroled in March, after serving half his sentence. Both the prosecution and defense have asked the court to give them until Jan. 2 to file all the documents relating to an appeal. If he is released in March, this means he could be out of prison a year before the court actually takes up his appeal.
“That is normal,” said former prosecutor Ken Hodges, who was not connected to the Ellis trial.
One holdup was the sheer physical challenge to the court reporter of transcribing all the hearings, jury selection and the trial itself, which lasted a month. That’s almost 3,700 pages — 1,058 from jury selection, another 2,582 in testimony and 57 pages of transcription from the sentencing.
“A court reporter is working all day long on other cases and she has to go home at night to work on it (transcribing Ellis’ trial),” said Robin Clark, a past president of the Georgia Bar Association, who also closely followed the Ellis case. “She has to go back and check spellings and it takes a long time.”
The transcript has only recently been completed.
On average, Clark said, an appeal takes 12 to 18 months. “It’s never fast,” she said. “My guess is they probably wouldn’t be arguing that case until summer 2016.”
‘HIS SPIRITS ARE GOOD’
Ellis, who remains suspended without pay as DeKalb's chief executive officer, was initially accused of strong-arming county vendors for contributions to his 2012 re-election campaign. The jury found him guilty of attempting to force one county vendor to make a $2,500 campaign contribution by threatening his $250,000 contract. Jurors also convicted him of three counts of perjury for lying to a special grand jury investigating county contracts.
Judge Courtney Johnson refused to allow Ellis to remain free on bond while he appealed. Ellis’ lawyers on Nov. 16 asked the Georgia Court of Appeals to overrule her.
“Right now he’s still in custody and we’re pursuing all avenues to have him released on bond, as he should be,” said Craig Gillen, one of his attorneys.
“He’s doing well. His spirits are good,” Gillen said.
JOB PROSPECTS AT STAKE
It’s not just the time that Ellis spends in prison that is the reason for his appeals, said Hodges, the former prosecutor. Ellis, a real estate attorney, has temporarily lost his license to practice law but can have it reinstated if he wins on appeal.
Ellis did not respond to a letter asking him to comment.
“If he could win his appeal, he would have no felony conviction on his record unless they retried him for a third time,” Clark said.
“As a lawyer, I would do everything I could to hang on to my law license. … If he has a felony conviction on his record, if he applies for a job he has to report that conviction, and he’s unlikely to get any job with a felony conviction,” Clark said.
SECRET TAPE RECORDING
While the appeal bond is pending before the Court of Appeals, the appeal of the conviction itself will go before the state Supreme Court, which has also been asked to review a number of motions on which the judge ruled against the defense.
Ellis’ lawyers think Johnson was wrong to let jurors see his videotaped grand jury testimony that led to the perjury convictions. They are questioning the scope of that grand jury, which initially focused on allegations of fraud and cronyism as the county was beginning a vast $1.7 billion upgrade of sewer lines.
From there it expanded to corruption in other parts of county government.
Ellis told the grand jury he had no role in deciding who received county contracts, but there was a secret tape recording of him discussing taking away business from one county contractor.
LIMITS ON TESTIMONY
Another issue Ellis is appealing — in order to counter the accusation that he strong-armed contractors — is Johnson’s ruling that he could not call county vendors for contributions to his 2012 re-election campaign. Ellis’ lawyers argued, unsuccessfully, that there were many vendors who felt no pressure to make a campaign contribution.
Johnson also put limits on what character witnesses could say and even what Ellis could say about his history when he testified.
In his first trial on these charges, which ended in a mistrial in 2014 because the jury could not reach a verdict, character witnesses had more latitude to talk about how they knew Ellis and how they viewed him.
The second time around they could only answer “yes” or “no” to questions about Ellis’ trustworthiness and his testimony under oath.
About the Author
