David Cooke, Macon Judicial Circuit district attorney (Photo: YouTube)

The first lawyers to successfully challenge Macon Circuit District Attorney David Cooke's practice of pursuing gambling charges against businesses with video gaming machines said the DA's call for a law banning the devices means the people he has prosecuted did nothing wrong.

Atlanta attorney Chris Anulewicz said Cooke's call this week for the Georgia General Assembly to pass a law banning the coin-operated game machines “must mean they are currently legal—and have been.” Cooke confirmed Monday that the coin-operated game machines he wants to ban were the basis of his office's prosecution last year of Anulewicz's client, 74-year-old Peach County restaurant owner Ronnie Bartlett.

Bartlett is one of dozens of defendants Cooke has charged with gambling offenses stemming from their operation of the game machines. He was the first who chose to fight the charges rather than enter a plea deal.

Anulewicz's law partner and co-counsel is former Georgia Attorney General Mike Bowers.

The Georgia Court of Appeals overturned Bartlett's conviction on June 25, finding that the evidence to sustain the felony gambling charges “was insufficient as a matter of law,” and that Bartlett was “operating only the appropriate types of games” when his restaurant was raided and subsequently shut down.

Claiming that Georgians “play billions of dollars on the machines each year,” Cooke said at a Monday news conference that their proliferation has perpetrated an industry “that relies on addicts' dependence for profit.”

Cooke, however, hasn't been deterred by what he acknowledged  was the absence of legislation making the coin-operated gaming machines illegal. Cooke and several other district attorneys across the state—under the guidance of metro Atlanta attorney Michael Lambros—for years have seized the same coin-operated machines he now wants to formally ban and used them to prosecute hundreds of business owners for commercial gambling offenses. Those prosecutions, in turn, have resulted in the seizure of millions of dollars in assets.

On Tuesday, Cooke doubled down, filing a civil forfeiture suit alleging racketeering by four companies that are master license holders for more than 400 video gaming machines the DA wants to ban. The machines are currently housed in 70 convenience stores, restaurants and other businesses across the state. The suit also names an estimated 100 business owners and operators as defendants, including the corporate officers of the license holder businesses.

Cooke also filed criminal racketeering charges against a Bibb County sheriff's deputy who operated one of the stores that housed gaming machines for customers' use and the corporate officers of the license holder companies.

“We still maintain that the machines in the cases we have brought were either illegal machines or legal machines that were converted to illegal devices in the way that they were used,” Cooke said after the news conference. “Even the machines that are legal, when used in a legal manner, are designed to be addictive. And the amount of profit generated is too great a temptation for most store owners to refuse when they pay out in cash.”

But Atlanta attorney Chris Anulewicz said Cooke's call to ban the coin-operated game machines “must mean they are currently legal—and have been.” Cooke confirmed Monday that the game machines he wants to ban were the basis of his office's prosecution of Anulewicz's client Ronnie Bartlett last year.

Anulewicz and his Balch & Bingham partner, former Georgia Attorney General Mike Bowers, represent Bartlett in the criminal case and a separate federal civil rights case pending against Cooke and Lambros over what they contend was Bartlett's illegal prosecution for operating nine gaming machines at his restaurant.

Cooke's news conference gives weight to their contentions, Anulewicz and Bowers said Monday.

Coin-operated machines like those Cooke wants banned “have been and are legal in this state, something the DA has known and that the plain language of the law and the courts have made clear,” Anulewicz said.

Bowers said that, if Cooke now wants to ban the same games he used to convict Bartlett, “He must be saying that he's been acting wrongly. If he has been acting rightly, then why does he need legislation? If he has been acting correctly, there is no need for legislation.”

Bartlett and his family were driven into bankruptcy after Cooke and Lambros arranged a 2015 raid of their Peach County restaurant, where nine coin-operated video games were seized. Bartlett wasn't indicted until 17 months after the raid shut down his family's restaurant and two months after Bartlett filed a federal civil rights suit against them.

That suit claims prosecutors knew that representations of Bartlett's alleged criminal wrongdoing “were false because the machines [the] defendants falsely identified in the affidavit as illegal gambling machines were declared perfectly legal by the Georgia Supreme Court five years earlier.”

The gambling charges against Bartlett were based on the premise that winners of coin-operated amusement games Cooke targeted received cash prizes for playing games that require no skill on the part of the player—a misdemeanor offense under state law. Bartlett was charged with multiple felonies.

Until Bartlett's trial, Anulewicz said, other defendants facing similar charges entered pleas with no jail time after agreeing to forfeit assets seized in raids of their businesses.

On Monday, Cooke said that middle Georgia residents have spent more than $200 million playing the coin-operated games for “illegal cash payouts.”

Cooke has said he will appeal Bartlett's conviction and expects to win, although he added, “We cannot prosecute our way out of this problem. This is a gambling epidemic that only the Legislature can cure.”

But the appeals court opinion noted that Bartlett's game machines included only “appropriate types of games,” and that there is no state law “that a cash payout would convert an otherwise legal [coin-operated amusement machine] into an illegal gambling device that would have subjected Bartlett to prosecution.”

Cooke contended Monday that “while it is illegal for stores to make cash payouts, … most of them do.”

Cooke also said the Georgia Bureau of Investigation only has eight agents assigned to police commercial gambling. “That's not enough manpower to cover a multi-billion dollar industry,” he said. “Based on the numbers, that's not even enough to cover Macon.”

Cooke also called out the state Legislature for what he branded “a shameful political sleight-of-hand” that regulates coin-operated gaming machines but offers “no real means of enforcement.”

And he promised, “There's a lot I can do once we have sued or indicted individual store and machine owners who have violated the law. And I intend to use all the tools I have available to hold those who violate the law accountable.”

“This problem will not go away until the Legislature acts to ban these machines that are wreaking havoc in our communities,” he said.

Additional Reading: 

Conviction Based on Gaming Machines Overturned

Macon Judge Declines to Disqualify Special ADA Over Legal Fees

Lawyers Battle Over Special Prosecutor Role in Gambling Cases

Macon DA, Atlanta Attorney Accused of Fabricating Evidence to Bolster Asset Seizures