Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter denied prosecutors’ request for a gag order in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating case Friday, blasting District Attorney Paul Howard and the special investigators he appointed for numerous public statements asserting that former APS Superintendant Beverly Hall and 34 co-defendants had engaged in a massive cheating conspiracy.

“Do ya’ll believe in the concept of presumption of innocence?” Baxter asked Senior Assistant District Attorney Christopher Quinn, who was supporting a motion to bar any attorneys or their clients from discussing the case outside of court.

“These folks have been vilified and tried in the court of public opinion,” said Baxter, “and your office has pretty much led the charge.”

Baxter pointed to an hour-long press conference Howard held when the indictments were announced in March, as well as numerous statements to the press by former Georgia Attorney General Michael Bowers, one of Howards’s specially appointed district attorneys, and asked Quinn why his office was suddenly so concerned about anyone making outside comments on the case.

“It may be very difficult, based on what’s gone on, to find a jury that can give these folks the presumption of innocence,” Baxter said.

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Fulton County Sheriff’s Department Public Affairs Officer Tracy Flanagan, who has been dutifully sending out notices and mug shots of the folks indicted in the Atlanta Public Schools’ test-cheating investigation as they arrive for booking at the Fulton County Jail, wrapped up her latest update with an admonition for the reporters and camera crews that have been camped out at the Rice Street facility all week:

“News crews gathered outside the front door of the Fulton County Jail are reminded to not to (sic) block the entrance,” wrote Flanagan. “You may pursue defendants to the planters that border the fire lane. Thank you very much for your cooperation.”

Flanagan’s most recent email states that all but one of the 35 educators indicted Friday have been booked.

The publisher of an online news site who, despite no formal legal training, won a Georgia Supreme Court decision forcing the Atlanta City Council to stop holding unrecorded votes has dismissed his claims, declaring total victory and pocketing a total of $1,000 to cover his expenses.

Matthew Cardinale, the 31-year-old webmaster and main reporter for the Atlanta Progressive News website, was beaming last week as he entered the Fulton County Courthouse to file his notice of dismissal.

In 2010, Cardinale filed suit against the city arguing that members of the City Council violated the state Open Meetings Act by failing to record the names and votes of members during a retreat in 2010.

Arguing his own case, Cardinale failed to persuade a Fulton County judge and the Georgia Court of Appeals that the law mandated that such votes be recorded, but in February 2012 a narrowly divided Georgia Supreme Court agreed with Cardinale, earning praise from state Attorney General Sam Olens and other open government advocates.

In 2012, Cardinale filed another suit claiming that the City Council routinely violated the law by closing committee briefings to the public. Earlier this year, the council’s seven committee chairs voluntarily agreed to open all briefings to the public.

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One of two guns seized the same day.

The General Assembly seems to have given up on the idea of allowing guns to be carried in Georgia courthouses, but – judging from the continuing seizure of weapons at the security checkpoints at the Fulton County Courthouse – some members of the public just can’t wait.

According to a release sent out Thursday evening by Fulton County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Tracy Flanagan, security staff have seized seven weapons so far this year, including four handguns.

Two of the guns were seized the same day: The stylish pink Glock 9 mm above belonged to Tomesha Jordan, 35, who told deputies she was there “to show support for a relative who had a court appearance” after her March 13 arrest on charges of carrying a concealed weapon in an unauthorized location, according to the release.

On the same day another woman, 22-year-old Shimeika Cargill, tried to enter the courthouse with a Taurus .22 caliber pistol with a seven-round magazine and a chambered cartridge.

She was discovered to be wanted in DeKalb County and transferred to the authorities there.

On Wednesday, Yvan Maxey was arrested for trying to bring a Bersa .380 into the courthouse. In January, and unidentified man was arrested when his backpack was found to contain a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson handgun and magazine loaded with hollow-point bullets.

The charges against him were subsequently dismissed. In 2012, seven guns were seized by courthouse security, according to the release. — Greg Land

The husband of Jacqueline Culp, who died after her car was rammed by a police cruiser that ran through a red light last summer in southwest Atlanta, has sued the city of Atlanta. The officer driving the patrol car, Joshua Sieck, was charged with vehicular homicide and fired a few days after the wreck. He is not named in the suit.

Culp, 59, died at Grady Memorial Hospital two days after Sieck’s police cruiser sped through the signal on Cascade Road, striking Culp’s BMW 740 as she was driving on Fairburn Road. The filing said Sieck was on his way “an emergency suicide call which was in excess of 30 minutes old.”

The suit, filed Wednesday in Fulton County State Court on behalf of Culp’s widower, Ralph Culp, includes a copy of a Dec. 4 letter from his lawyers, Cuffie Law Firm partner Thomas Cuffie and Harold Spence, demanding the $500,000 liability limit the city bears under Georgia’s sovereign immunity statutes.

“The response we’ve gotten so far is that [the city] is looking into it and investigating,” said Spence. “What’s particularly disturbing to us is that six days after the accident, they felt they had enough evidence to end Joshua Sieck’s police career and fire him, but …  they still don’t have enough information to do what’s right by this family.”

Deputy City Attorney Eric Richardson said the city was still gathering information on the accident.

“I won’t comment on the specifics of the suit,” Richardson said. “We got the claim, we are investigating the claim and have been ever since we got the ante litem notice. We want to do a complete and thorough investigation: We’re talking about a serious incident and substantial injuries.”

Two suits seeking damages from Atlanta-based rent-to-own company Aaron’s and its largest franchisee have been filed in Fulton County courts over claims that spyware the companies installed on rental computers secretly captured images of users and recorded sensitive data, then transmitted that data to the program’s installers.

A suit filed Wednesday in Fulton County Superior Court seeks class status for a portion of what the filing attorney estimates are at least 800 customers whose rental computers had the program installed. Federal suits naming Aaron’s and its franchisees, as well as Texas rent-to-own franchiser ColorTyme Inc., have also been filed in California and Pennsylvania. In September the Federal Trade Commission announced that it had settled with now-closed Pennsylvania-based software designer DesignerWare LLC and seven rental companies that had installed the firm’s PC Rental Agent software on its computers.

The putative class action in Fulton names SEI/Aarons Inc.–the largest Aaron’s franchisee, with 100 stores in nine states–as a defendant, along with Aaron’s. A similar suit filed last week with a single plaintiff names Aaron’s and a Washington-based franchisee as defendants.

An Aaron’s spokeswoman forwarded a statement laying any responsibility for the offending software on its franchisees.

“Not one of our 1,300-plus company-operated stores has used PC Rental Agent or any other product developed by Designerware LLC,” it said in part. “Aaron’s disagrees with the claims made in the litigation and will defend the litigation vigorously.”

Aaron’s has more than 700 franchisees, according to its website.

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The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday reinstated the murder convictions and sentences for two men that a Fulton County judge tossed out because one page of a three-page investigative report was missing at the time of their trial.

In separate trials in 2008, Christopher James and Herman Lawson were convicted of murdering Fatima Fisher and Jeremiah Ingram; a third co-defendant indicted on the same charges was later acquitted by a jury.

In 2011, now-retired Fulton County Superior court Judge Marvin Arrington Sr. ordered new trials for both men, agreeing with their lawyers that a missing page of a three-page report from the medical examiner’s office was a “critical piece of evidence” that could have helped fix the time of the murders and possibly helped their cases.

In a five-page opinion for a unanimous court, Justice Robert Benham noted that the copies of the report in both the prosecution and defense files were missing the page, which Arrington’s order said was likely due to the report being photocopied on a copier set to print double-sided documents. Benham’s opinion said the lower court “made it clear that it found no evidence of malfeasance or misfeasance with regard to the missing page” on the part of the state.

That the third defendant’s attorneys were able to easily ascertain that a page was missing – they were numbered, Benham noted – and acquire the full report prior to the trial indicated that the full document could have been obtained “by the exercise of reasonable diligence.”

“That their co-indictee’s defense team recognized that a page was missing and obtained it defeats appellees’ claim of suppression,” wrote Benham, granting the state’s motion to overturn Arrington’s order.

The office of Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard had no response to the ruling, according to spokeswoman Yvette Jones.

Roswell defense attorney Raina Nadler, who represented the inmates on appeal along with Riverdale attorney Barbara Collins, said they had not had a chance to discuss the order with the clients.

Jake Waldrop, a federal public defender, was found yesterday afternoon dead in an apparent suicide, an Atlanta Police report said.

The police Wednesday released a report from an officer who responded to the scene on the 10th floor of the State Bar of Georgia’s parking garage, where Waldrop was said to park regularly. His office was across the street.

Waldrop had a gunshot wound in his chest, the report said. ”There were no signs of a struggle or foul play and the scene appeared to be consistent with that of a suicide,” it added.

Bar president Robin Frazer Clark confirmed Wednesday that Waldrop’s body was found in his car in the garage.

“The State Bar is obviously saddened at the loss of one of our members, especially one so young,” Clark said. ”We will be working on new ideas to make our members and their office mates and family and friends more aware of the risk of suicide and what we can each do to help prevent it.”

The Judicial Qualifications Commission investigator whose probes have ended dozens of judicial careers since 2008 will no longer roam the state in search of wayward jurists.

Instead, Richard Hyde will be a member of the JQC itself, the agency that assesses how allegations and evidence against Georgia’s judges should be handled. Governor Nathan Deal tapped Hyde to the JQC on Friday.

Chattahoochee Superior Court Judge John Allen, who chairs the commission, said Hyde would have to relinquish his investigative duties in order to serve as a member.  “It’s a policy on our part as commissioners that we don’t investigate,” said Allen. The JQC will launch a search for another investigator, Allen said. In the meantime, JQC Director Jeff Davis, who used to handle disciplinary complaints at the State Bar of Georgia, will serve as acting investigator.

Hyde will replace Atlanta businessman Jack Winter, who has served two four-year terms as one of two citizen members of the seven-member panel, which also includes two judges and three lawyers.

In addition to his JQC duties, Hyde is an investigator for Balch & Bingham. A former policeman, television news producer and investigator for then-Attorney General Michael Bowers, now a B&B partner, Hyde is a good choice for the slot, Allen said.

“It will allow us a great deal of comfortable continuity, if you will,” said Allen. “He knows what the processes and procedures are.”

In an emailed statement, Davis echoed Allen’s praises.

“Given Richard’s breadth of experience as a public corruption investigator with the State Attorney General, his recent investigation of teachers in the Atlanta schools cheating scandal, and his tireless work investigating judicial misconduct, it is clear that the Governor could not have made a better choice than Richard Hyde to represent the interests of the citizens of this State on the Commission,” wrote Davis. “It is an outstanding appointment which will ensure continued public confidence in a fair and impartial judiciary.”

Hyde declined to comment on his appointment.

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court ruling that the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless must pay the city of Atlanta for water service at its homeless shelter at the corner of Peachtree and Pine streets.

The unpublished order issued Tuesday affirms a 2011 summary judgment order issued by U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash that the shelter’s claims that its constitutional rights had been violated by the city were unfounded, and that the Task Force must make good on unpaid bills totaling $147,288 at the time.

The dispute began in 2008, when the city told the Task Force that it was cutting off the water to the shelter, which houses hundreds of homeless men on any given night. The Task Force sued, alleging breach of contract and other claims charging the city with violating its due process and equal protection guarantees.

In 2011 Thrash ruled against the shelter, concluding among other things that the city was protected from suit by sovereign immunity and that the Task Force had not proved that it was treated differently from other, similar entities.

The appellate panel, comprised of Judges Rosemary Barkett, Adalberto Jordan and William T. Hodges of Florida’s Middle District, sitting by designation, concurred. The three-page ruling concluded that the Task Force had not properly pleaded its First Amendment claim, and had not demonstrated that it was denied equal protection or that it had a constitutionally guaranteed property right to grants controlled by the city.

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