For the first time since his indictment almost a year and a half ago, Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill was in court Friday with the lawyers defending him against racketeering and theft by taking charges.
Hill had skipped all the previous hearings leading up to his trial set for Aug. 5, but Judge Albert Collier ordered the sheriff to be there Friday morning because the Clayton County jurist had something Hill needed to hear.
Collier ticked off a list of ways his life had intersected with the lives of Hill and District Attorney Tracy Graham Lawson. The judge said he wanted to know if either side would waive their right to challenge his objectivity by seeking to have him recused from presiding over Hill’s trial on 32 felony charges that include racketeering, theft by taking, making a false statement, violation of his oath and influencing a witness.
“Without a waiver, I am not going forward with this trial,” Collier said. “This case needs to be tried. This case has been delayed long enough. The people of Clayton County need this to be tried.
Layla Zon, the district attorney in Walton and Newton counties who is prosecuting the case for Lawson, said “the state doesn’t feel any of those [incidents listed by the judge] are reasons for recusal” and that she would waive asking that Collier be replaced with another judge. Lawson asked Zon to handle the Hill case because she wanted to avoid appearances that the sheriff’s prosecution was politically-based, a claim that Hill has made many times.
Hill’s team said it also didn’t believe “there is a conflict” but they still wanted a week to do “due diligence” in considering whether to waive their option, because one of the four lawyers representing Hill was not in court Friday.
“We want this trial to go down on Aug. 5,” Hill attorney Steven Frey added. “We are not looking for anything to delay this trial.”
Already, 350 jury summonses have been sent in the hope of assembling a pool of 36 prospective jurors from which 12 jurors and two alternates will be selected. In the mailed envelopes containing the summonses, Collier included a letter telling prospective jurors to avoid media accounts of Hill’s case and to not talk about it with others.
Even with a large number of prospective jurors called, it is expected to be difficult to find people unfamiliar with Hill and his legal troubles. He was overwhelmingly elected to the office last year — despite being under indictment — in a contest that pitted him against the man who defeated him in 2008. Hill’s popularity continues to be high and he has a reputation for responding swiftly to citizen complaints.
Hill stands accused of using his office during his first term — Jan. 1, 2005 to Dec. 31, 2008 — for personal gain. The indictment alleges he used his county car and credit card for vacations, that he had an employee counted as on sick leave so she could accompany him on a weekend getaway, and that he assigned staff to work on his failed 2008 re-election campaign and his personal charities.
Hill was to have gone on trial late last year — after he was elected sheriff and before he took office Jan. 1 — but it was delayed when prosecutors unsuccessfully appealed the judge’s decision to drop five of the original 37 counts.
Collier wanted to make sure Friday that the attorneys understood he has many years of experience with both Hill and the district attorney.
When he was an assistant district attorney, Collier worked cases with Hill, who was then a homicide detective for the Clayton County Police Department. Also, Hill’s deputies are responsible for security at the courthouse and for protecting Collier and his staff.
Collier said he was part of the “hiring team” that chose Lawson to fill a position as an assistant district attorney. He and Lawson both sing in the choir at the First Baptist Church in Jonesboro, and Collier and Lawson’s husband are in the same Sunday School class.
Still, Collier said, he could not find “any legal basis … to recuse myself” or anything “that would cause me not to be fair and impartial.”
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