Appeals in two separate cases related to the planned Atlanta Public Safety Training Center were heard Tuesday in the Georgia Court of Appeals.
One appeal involved one of the 61 defendants indicted on RICO charges. The trial of Ayla King, who filed a speedy trial demand after the indictment was released in August, was set to start in January, with a jury already sworn in back in December.
King’s attorney Suri Chadha Jimenez filed a motion to dismiss the case on grounds that his client’s speedy trial demand was not met. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Esmond Adams denied the motion; Chadha Jimenez appealed that ruling.
King, of Massachusetts, faces one count of violating the state’s RICO Act, after allegedly trespassing into a DeKalb County forest on March 5, 2023, by joining “an organized mob of individuals designed to overwhelm the police force in an attempt to occupy the DeKalb forest and cause property damage,” according to the indictment.
The other appeal concerned a 2021 land swap between DeKalb County and Ryan Millsap, the founder of Blackhall Studios, which was a 40-acre property and the former site of Intrenchment Creek Park’s South River trailhead. The South River Watershed Alliance filed a lawsuit arguing that the land swap was an “unlawful conversion” of public land.
In December, a DeKalb County Superior Court Judge granted the county’s motion for summary judgment. The watershed alliance appealed. Attorneys for the state argued that the watershed alliance didn’t have much argument because they were not a direct party involved in the land swap and that the superior court judge’s order should be affirmed.
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