A jury has been seated in the RICO trial of a protester who opposed the construction of Atlanta’s planned public safety training center, and testimony is set to start in January.
Judge Kimberly Adams, who is presiding over the case involving 61 defendants named in the RICO indictment, told jurors they are expected back on Jan. 10, at 9 a.m. for the start of witness testimony in the trial against Ayla King. The trial is expected to last three or four weeks.
A panel of 14, which includes 12 trial jurors and two alternates, was selected around noon on Tuesday after two days of jury selection. The 14 jurors include four white women, four Black women, three Black men, one white man, one Asian woman and one woman of unknown race.
However, Adams is considering excusing a sworn juror after she told the court that she has pre-booked travel from Jan. 5-12. Adams said she will make the decision by 5 p.m. on Tuesday and an alternate will be brought to court Wednesday if she excuses the juror.
Pre-trial motions are expected to be heard either Jan. 8 or 9, and it’s not expected to last more than a couple of hours.
King is the first defendant named in the indictment going to trial after filing a speedy trial demand on Oct. 30. Under Georgia law, a jury has to be seated and sworn into service by the end of the speedy trial deadline which, in Fulton County, is two terms of court. Each term is about two months long.
Due to the speedy trial demand, a jury needed to be seated and sworn before the end of the year.
King, who is being represented by Suri Chadha Jimenez, is facing one count of conspiracy to violate the state’s RICO Act. According to the indictment, King is accused of trespassing into the 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.”
All 61 defendants have been charged with violating the state’s RICO act, and some face additional charges of domestic terrorism, arson and money laundering. Most are not from Georgia.
The indictments mainly focus on the Defend the Atlanta Forest group, which prosecutors described as an Atlanta-based organization that is an “anti-government, anti-police, and anti-corporate extremist organization.”
The group’s purpose, according to the indictment, is to occupy parts or all of the 381 forested acres where construction of the facility has commenced. The land is in DeKalb County but owned by the city of Atlanta and leased to the Atlanta Police Foundation.
City officials and the police foundation say the $90 million facility is key to first-rate public safety training. Opponents argue the center will further militarize police, and worry about destruction of the urban forest in which it is being built.
Legal attempts to halt construction and to hold a referendum on the training center are ongoing.
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