In the Atlanta school test cheating trial, 11 defendants have been convicted under the Georgia Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act as well as under other felonies, punishable by more than one year in prison and, in the case of racketeering, up to 20 years.
The right to a trial by jury is inviolate under our Constitution. While the plea bargaining process has become commonplace in our courts as a prosecutorial tool to expedite case processing and handle the tremendous criminal caseload, it is neither mentioned in the Constitution nor mandated by state law.
For the court to impose a more punitive sentence because these 11 educators put their faith in the jury system and asserted their constitutional right to jury trial would be an enormous abuse of the broad discretion placed in the judiciary.
While it is the judge who has the ultimate decision-making authority, the district attorney holds the power to shape the process. Solely vested with the power to determine whether to bring charges, what charges to bring, what plea bargain to offer, and what sentence recommendations to make, the stage for sentencing is set by the prosecutor.
Having chosen to prosecute the educators for felonies including racketeering — a charge created for organized crime, mobsters and gang activity — Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard can now only make recommendations within the sentencing prescribed for the convictions. The judge is not required to accept them.
However, as the people’s elected official, Howard should understand better than anyone the degree to which this complex prosecution has impacted the lives of all people in this community — not just students, but Atlanta as a whole: the schools, thousands of teachers and employees and students, and a chamber tasked with recruiting businesses to a city now labeled with the biggest test-cheating scandal in the country.
Howard chose to allow 21 educators who admitted changing answers to plead to misdemeanors in exchange for their testimony against their supervisors, and to return to their homes, find other employment and resume their lives.
Except for one defendant, the higher tier of supervisors within the senior cabinet — those who set policy for performances and bonuses and reported directly to the superintendent — were deemed “unindicted co-conspirators” and were not prosecuted.
Two accused administrators including the superintendent died. The 12 defendants who refused to plead to felonies exercised their constitutional right to a jury trial.
Some 40 other states have had cheating scandals, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. None has resulted in criminal charges, and especially not racketeering charges.
The district attorney needs to consider these facts in his sentencing recommendation as well as the non-judicial sentences the convictions of these educators impose upon them — loss of professional licenses, making it impossible for them to return to their chosen professions; financial loss as a result of their inability to work for more than five years; forfeiture of the lifelong pensions for which they have worked; and the detriment to their families and communities of their loss of service and talent as a result of the stigma these prosecutions have imposed.
While it may be counterintuitive to Howard’s prosecutorial instincts to recommend minimum sentences, the discretion vested in him by the Constitution and the trust placed in him by his constituency cry out for his statesmanship. He should make a humane recommendation that helps to heal this community and restore the lives of these educators.
Moreover, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter should exercise his tremendous discretion in imposing sentences that reflect that any conspiracy involved the complicity of an educational system caught up in high-stakes testing frenzy. These educators did not create the system in which schools have been corrupted across this nation by making standardized tests the chief measure of school, teacher and student performance.
Certainly, incarceration is neither mandated nor appropriate in this case.
