With closing arguments finished, a jury is now deciding the fate of state Sen. Don Balfour.
The deliberations follow nearly three days of testimony, ending with Balfour himself taking the stand Wednesday. In testimony, Balfour attempted to turn the tables on his accusers by claiming the state actually owes him money.
Balfour, R-Snellville, on trial in Fulton County Superior Court for submitting inaccurate claims for mileage and expenses to the Legislature, picked apart the 18-count indictment to show jurors the state’s figures overestimated how much he took.
For example, on one count the state claimed he was overpaid $17.72 in mileage. Using both the state and his own records, Balfour said the amount really was $12.87.
The amounts are less important than the overall impression Balfour’s defense team is trying to create that Balfour is being prosecuted for making inadvertent errors to reimbursement claims when the state’s own math may be faulty.
Moreover, Balfour said there are 115 days over five years he was working for the state when he did not claim a legislative per diem. That’s more than $23,000 Balfour said he didn’t claim.
“I should’ve gotten paid per diems for those days but for the fact that I didn’t turn them in,” he said. “It wasn’t important. I wasn’t there for the money.”
Balfour was on the stand for more than an hour answering questions from his attorney, Ken Hodges. After a break for lunch, he faced another hour of cross examination from Assistant Attorney General David McLaughlin. McLaughlin tried to establish a pattern of what Balfour claims were errors in his expense. However, similar to testimony Tuesday, some of the McLaughlin’s presentation bogged down in an avalanche of records and dates that weren’t always related to the five-year period of the indictments.
Earlier testimony for the defense began Wednesday with former Gov. Sonny Perdue.
Balfour’s defense team expects to wrap up its case by midday and hand his fate to a jury that must decide if the longtime lawmaker intentionally falsified expense reports over a period of five years. Beginning Tuesday, a parade of former lawmakers and other political types testified Balfour may be unorganized, but he is not dishonest.
Perdue, who said he left the bedside of his dying sister to testify, said Balfour is a “cantankerous curmudgeon” but he also is a man of his word. The former governor hedged a bit when asked if Balfour is more honest than the average legislator.
“Let’s just say Don was more definitive than some of his colleagues,” he said.
Former Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson and former state Sen. William Ray, now a judge with the Georgia Court of Appeals, also testified.
Johnson called Balfour a mentor.
“His integrity was never questioned,” he said. “He was not a partisan. There were a lot of us who were bomb throwers on both sides of the aisle. … He was not that way.”
Ray, like others in the defense’s rebuttal, said that Balfour was not particularly organized. Balfour’s lawyers say his inattention to detail – Hodges called him “sloppy” – is behind the inaccurate expense reports, rather than a desire to defraud the state out of a few thousand dollars.
The prosecution, led by McLaughlin, struggled this week to show Balfour intentionally double-billed mileage and claimed compensation for days he was not doing state work.
Witnesses for the prosecution showed Balfour filed 16 vouchers which claimed expenses to which he was not entitled. Balfour has admitted he made mistakes, but he has maintained they were accidental.
If convicted he would lose his seat in the Senate and could spend years in prison. If not, he will return to the Senate in January when the Legislature reconvenes.
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