Rumors have it that the Republican political consultants in Gwinnett County who hate another Republican political consultant, Bill McKinney, are going to have to keep on hating him with no help from their friendly DA.

In a 7-0 decision issued this morning, the Georgia Supreme Court has ruled that the case filed by Gwinnett District Attorney Danny Porter against Bill McKinney was filed in the wrong county. In the analysis of their decision, it appears that because the Georgia State Ethics Commission resides entirely in Fulton County, any case regarding violations of the Ethics Act must be filed in Fulton County.

Here is the excerpt of their decision: “In the case now before us, the statutes in question required Defendants to file reports with the State Ethics Commission, which is exclusively located in Fulton County. In enacting this law, the Legislature provided no definition for he act of filing and included no statutory component to the crime which would qualify it as a continuing offense. Compare State v. Kell, 276 Ga. 423 (577 E2d 551) (2003) (venue for Medicaid fraud). As a result, under the statute as it is currently written, the only proper venue in this case was Fulton County, the county where the State Ethics Commission is located and the disclosure reports in question are required to be filed. Therefore, the trial court erred by denying defendants’ motion to dismiss the indictment. Judgment reversed. All the Justices concur.”

You may ponder what the heck this has to do with in your part of the political world. Well, something interesting, actually. This case, you see, came about because of a politically-driven district attorney (Porter) and the ability of political consultants to feed him information about a political race and get the DA to actually become involved in the race 2 weeks before the election.

In the 2006 GOP primary in Gwinnett, incumbent county commissioner Kevin Kenerly was being opposed by newcomer Jodie Rosser. Rosser was McKinney’s candidate, and, apparently, too much of a threatening challenger to the political hierarchy of Gwinnett County government. This is likely why Porter decided to involve himself…that, and his relationship with other political consultants in Gwinnett who hate McKinney.

Within two weeks of being handed all of the “evidence” against Bill McKinney (from political sources opposing Rosser), Danny Porter moved quickly to push this case forward so that it became the spotlight and helped slam Rosser’s candidacy right before the July 2006 primary. And, now, his entire case against McKinney gets thrown-out due to wrong venue.

Several questions should be asked, and answered, before Danny Porter’s next election:

1) Does Mr. Porter think his oath to office entitles him to engage the resources of the taxpayers to play sides in political races? How many other cases has Porter received evidence from in Gwinnett County that caused him to move so quickly, and have an impact on an actual political outcome?

3) Is justice blind in Gwinnett County with Danny Porter as the DA?

Here’s one thing I know with 95% certainty: Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard will not be engaging the resources of his office to help one faction of the GOP settle their ego with another faction of the GOP.

Now, our Legislature does have the option to amend this law so that Ethics Act-related cases that occur in counties like Gwinnett or Chatham, or wherever in Georgia, can be heard and prosecuted in those local jurisdictions. Until that time, however, district attorneys cannot be used to stick sharpened knives from one campaign into a competing campaign.

This entry was posted by Bill Simon, on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 1:01 pm and is filed under Rumors and You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.