Prosecutors from the state attorney general’s office got a tongue-lashing from Fulton Superior Court Judge Kimberly Esmond Adams on Wednesday for saying it was a mistake that they mishandled privileged attorney-client emails that were collected as evidence in the case against activists opposed to the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, also known as “Cop City.”
“What you’re saying to the court is not credible,” said Adams. “It flies in the face of any logic.”
The judge issued her admonishment in the latest episode of this controversial case. The defendants are among dozens of organizers and protesters against Cop City who have been charged by Georgia’s attorney general under the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Georgia in recent years has become a hotbed for aggressive uses of the racketeering law, which was originally intended as a tool to prosecute organized crime syndicates.
But even in that context, the use of RICO against Cop City dissenters stands out. Not only has the state charged those directly protesting the center’s construction, but in the case of the three defendants in court this week, it has also targeted those involved with funding and supporting protesters through means like bail funds, which the state legislature has also sought to criminalize.
Devin Franklin, movement policy counsel at the Southern Center for Human Rights and a former Fulton County public defender, told Capital B Atlanta he believes there will be more racketeering cases against protest movements in the future. Franklin said that activists and defense attorneys were watching the hearing closely because the judge’s ruling will likely shape how the state and local district attorneys handle future racketeering cases involving protest movements.
“I think that this is a testing ground for them to see how it works and how movements are able to respond,” he said.
The Wednesday hearing was for a motion to dismiss filed by defense attorneys for the organizers of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, Marlon Kautz, Savannah Patterson, and Adele MacLean. They are just three of 61 people indicted on racketeering charges for their involvement in the Stop Cop City and Defend the Atlanta Forest movements.
Defense attorney Don Samuels provided emails showing that he warned the AGs office multiple times that there were privileged communications collected when the state gained access to the defendants Gmail accounts.
Assistant Attorney General Hallie Scott Dixon assured the judge in court that no one in the AG’s office had seen the confidential emails, but Adams maintained that the mishap was “gross negligence” on the state’s part.
Adams indicated that she is not going to dismiss the case or recuse the state AG’s office from prosecution, but she did leave the door open for other remedies that could range from the suppression of certain evidence to requiring a diligent review of all evidence acquired by the state.
No longer a trial attorney himself, Franklin’s Southern Center has led the charge in making sure each of the defendants in this case has an attorney since the indictment was announced in September 2023.
For comparison, in the YSL RICO case that alleges rapper Young Thug and his associates operated a criminal gang in Atlanta, the indictment came down in May 2022. By the time the trial began over a year later in December 2023, four defendants had to be severed from the case because they were still unable to secure legal representation.
As to why the state is using RICO to go after these protesters rather than charging individuals with the crimes they have allegedly committed, Franklin said it’s more efficient for the state to try for multiple convictions at once. In a racketeering case, the prosecution is not limited to evidence of the alleged crimes but also anything that shows how the defendants were connected to one another in order to form the alleged criminal enterprise.
“It lessens the burden of the state to prove the actual crime,” Franklin said. “You can just kind of muddy the waters in a way that makes it really difficult for even the most skilled attorneys to defend.”
