Attorneys Craig Gillen and Roy Barnes filed a motion in Cobb County Superior Court Wednesday morning asking a judge to throw out a 31-count, Jan. 6 racketeering and theft indictment against Brown, who has led the Marietta-based electric membership cooperative for nearly two decades.
The filing is a relatively common legal tactic in criminal cases, although calling a press conference about it is not.
The filing said the charges involved acts too old to prosecute and that Brown had been cleared of any liability by a December 2009 settlement in a civil lawsuit and by the co-op’s board. It also said the state’s business judgment rule shields Brown from criminal liability.
“The extraordinary and outrageous circumstances of this prosecution have led Mr. Brown to petition this Court to uphold long-established legal and equitable shields against this overreaching and improper prosecutorial misconduct,” the motion says.
Gillen and Barnes, a former Georgia governor, both criticized the county district attorney’s office.
“The transactions listed in the indictment were transactions that were reviewed by and approved by some of the finest legal minds in the country,” said Gillen, pointing to the lawyers behind him.
Barnes called the indictment an outrage that will scare business away from Cobb County: “I’ve been practicing law for 40 years and I have never seen a case like this,” he said. “I doubt there’s one like it in the country.”
Kathy Watkins, a spokeswoman for Pat Head, the district attorney for Cobb County, said that office would have no comment on the press conference: “To try this case in the press would be a violation of state bar rules,” Watkins said.
A Cobb County grand jury indicted Brown based on a series of transactions involving Cobb EMC and a for-profit company formed to operate it.
The indictment accuses Brown of stealing millions from the cooperative and its customer-owners and of making false statements to customers in order to conceal the thefts.
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