Superior Court Judge Pursuing Bar Complaints, Criminal Contempt Against DA, ADAs Faces Bias, Misconduct Claims
Carroll County Superior Court Chief Judge John Simpson ordered a mistrial in a criminal case against a state trooper over a 2015 crash that killed two teenagers after he accused prosecutors of withholding evidence. Simpson then sought to punish prosecutors, who claim the judge is biased and must recuse, which Simpson refuses to do.
August 07, 2019 at 04:18 PM
9 minute read
A judge’s efforts to punish three prosecutors and bar them from continuing to prosecute a former state trooper charged in a fatal car crash has led to a legal brawl over whether the judge is exceeding his authority.
Attorneys for Carroll Circuit District Attorney Herb Cranford and two assistant DAs say that Carroll County Superior Court Chief Judge John Simpson repeatedly stepped out of legal and ethical bounds by launching his own criminal inquiry into the prosecutors, by filing bar complaints against them and by ordering the DA to disqualify his office from any further involvement in the prosecution of former Georgia state trooper Anthony “A.J.” Scott. All the while, Simpson has remained on the case, denying prosecutors’ claims that he is no longer impartial and should step down.
Simpson also issued an order charging Cranford and prosecutors Lara Myers and Matthew Swope with 12 counts of criminal contempt—allegedly for committing Brady violations by suppressing evidence. The judge accused the prosecutors of failing to tell the defense about a new theory for the fatal 2015 crash that surfaced this year, shortly before Scott’s trial.
Scott—now a Buchanan city councilman—was going 90 mph when he slammed into a carful of teenagers at night, killing two and leaving two others with severe head injuries. He was not on a call and was not using his blue lights or sirens when the teens’ car turned across the highway in front of him. He was fired shortly after the crash. He was tried on two counts of second-degree vehicular homicide, two counts of committing a serious injury by vehicle, speeding, reckless driving and violating his oath of office.
The judge also accused Myers and Swope of trying to use an enhanced version of the trooper’s dash cam video of the crash as a demonstrative aid during closing arguments without first notifying the defense, another alleged Brady violation. The video was introduced as evidence during the trial.
Simpson ultimately suspended the deadlocked jury’s deliberations and ordered a mistrial, which the judge blamed on prosecutors.
The prosecutors and their lawyers say Simpson’s subsequent plan to conduct his own criminal contempt inquiry of the alleged Brady violations is unconstitutional.
“There is absolutely no case in the state of Georgia that has ever permitted a court to call witnesses at a hearing, in a criminal case … in order to gather evidence to potentially prosecute the counsel for one of the parties,” Cranford’s counsel, Atlanta attorney Brian Steel, wrote in one of two motions asking Simpson to step down.
In a joint affidavit filed in a motion seeking Simpson’s recusal from further involvement in Scott’s case and the contempt proceedings, Cranford, Myers and Swope accused the judge of violating the state Code of Judicial Conduct by “failing to disqualify himself in a proceeding in which his impartiality is objectively and directly questioned.”
Simpson “fundamentally misconstrued facts” and “has an agenda to circumvent the law in his zeal to prosecute” the prosecutors, the affidavit said.
Simpson has twice refused to step down, arguing that prosecutors want to remove him because they don’t like his rulings and have failed to show he is biased.
Simpson did strike his contempt inquiry order, saying it was merely an attempt “to proceed informally.” He also backed away from his threat to notify the state attorney general if Cranford’s office didn’t step aside.
Instead of recusing, the judge charged the prosecutors with 12 counts of criminal contempt, then refused to grant an immediate appeal.
Prosecutors’ lawyers went to the Georgia Court of Appeals anyway. It took the court just 24 hours to grant a rare emergency stay on July 9 barring Simpson from taking any further action until it could hear the appeal.
Twelve days later, the appeals court reversed itself, saying a state Supreme Court ruling handed down in June restricted its ability to hear immediate appeals if the trial court judge objected. Steel has asked the appeals court to reconsider, and vowed to take the matter to the state Supreme Court if needed.
Steel said in his petition that, without the appellate court’s intervention, Simpson could have prosecutors removed from Scott’s case and place them at risk for disciplinary action by the bar.
Cranford “committed no wrongful unethical or illegal conduct whatsoever,” Steel told The Daily Report.
“District Attorney Cranford was not even one of the trial lawyers on this case,” he said. “To claim that he has committed a Brady violation or other misdeeds is frivolous and offensive. “
Myers’ attorney, Rudjard Hayes of Sanchez Hayes in Tyrone, called the judge’s actions “unconscionable.”
“This has shocked me,” Hayes said. “I have never seen any judge anywhere in 20-plus years I have been practicing law treat attorneys like this.”
Myers “didn’t lie or mislead anyone,” Hayes added. “It defies logic to me it’s gotten this far. …That’s not something I have ever seen or imagined would be coming from John Simpson.”
Tom Bever of Atlanta’s Chilivis Cochran Larkin & Bever, who is defending Swope, declined to comment.
Simpson also declined to comment.
Behind Simpson’s actions are two mistrial motions by Scott’s defense attorney Mac Pilgrim. Pilgrim moved for a mistrial during prosecutors’ closing argument when they showed the jury an edited version of the dashcam video that included a speed limit sign, a speedometer showing how fast the trooper was going and several red directional arrows highlighting the intersection where the crash occurred—all information that had been introduced as evidence at trial.
Simpson denied Pilgrim’s motion. But he rebuked prosecutors in front of the jury and ordered the jurors to discount the video. In a June 20 order, Simpson said prosecutors’ use of the edited video as a demonstrative aid “contained subliminal conclusions that are prohibited in a criminal trial,” “interfered with the defendant’s right to a fair trial and obstructed the administration of justice … as evidenced by the Court’s conclusion that the video was prejudicial to the defendant.”
Pilgrim made his second mistrial motion on May 22, while the jury was still out. Deliberations had begun on May 17,
Pilgrim said that, on May 20, he got an anonymous call “from a friend who has a friend who works for the Georgia State Patrol.” The caller told him that two months earlier, a trooper in the case developed a new theory about the four-year-old accident and told prosecutors about it.
Pilgrim didn’t know about the theory. On May 21, after the jury finished its third day of deliberations without a verdict,
Pilgrim decided to pursue the tip.
Pilgrim called Trooper Chad Barrow, a prosecution witness. He said Barrow told him that another trooper, Brandon Stone, had reread the accident reports just before the trial was originally scheduled to begin in March and decided the 17-year-old girl killed when she was jettisoned from the car was likely sitting in front with another passenger, not in the back seat as the official reports stated.
Pilgrim said Stone thought that if two passengers were seated in front, with one likely sitting on the other’s lap, they might have obstructed the driver’s view as he turned left across the highway and into Scott’s path. Pilgrim said that if 18-year-old driver Dillon Wall had seen Scott, the teen could have braked as the trooper swerved into the right-hand lane to avoid a collision.
Pilgrim, who throughout the trial blamed Wall for failing to yield to the trooper’s patrol car, said Stone’s new theory bolstered his argument that the crash was Wall’s fault.
Pilgrim acknowledged that prosecutors gave him Stone’s new video. He said that, when he and his associate weren’t able to view it, Myers and Swope played it for them several times at a pretrial meeting.
But Pilgrim said the two prosecutors didn’t mention Stone’s new theory. He said, when his associate asked about the video’s significance, Myers told her there was none and that prosecutors didn’t intend to introduce it at trial.
Pilgrim said that, after watching Stone’s video multiple times, “We didn’t see anything of great evidentiary value.” He also said he feared the prosecutors “were trying to enhance the video to show our client should have seen, or did see, the headlights” of the teens’ car.
But, he added, “Without knowing they [the troopers] thought the girl was sitting in the front seat, you could watch the enhanced video 27 times and never catch it. It looked like the same thing I saw before.”
Prosecutors argued at the May 22 mistrial hearing that the defense could have asked the troopers about the video. Pilgrim told The Daily Report he did talk to Barrow before the trial and asked if there was anything more he needed to know about the accident. He said Barrow told him he had been instructed by his supervisors that he could only to talk to the defense about the case with a prosecutor present.
Pilgrim said he decided such a meeting “would be futile.”
Pilgrim said prosecutors may not have agreed with Stone’s theory. “They may not have thought it was relevant,” he said. But, he added, “Had they told us … it might have changed my case.”
Simpson apparently agreed.
In declaring a mistrial, Simpson accused prosecutors of depriving the defense “of significant evidence that could lead a jury to logically conclude that the conditions in the victims’ vehicle and the victims’ conduct caused the accident.”
“A prosecutor with an accurate understanding of the law in Georgia would have known that the new evidence, at the very least, tends to negate the guilt of the accused,” he said.
“The district attorneys gambled with the defendant’s constitutional rights … and elected to conceal Trooper Stone’s new findings,” Simpson concluded. “Unfortunately that was a losing bet for the state.”
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