The parties arrived early Monday morning in a Fayette County courtroom for the trial Augustus Claudius Romain, Jr., the leader of the radical group Black Hammer Party, on felony charges relating to a police standoff at the group’s headquarters in Fayetteville in July 2022.
Dozens of potential jurors had been summoned as lawyers for the defense and prosecution appeared before Superior Court Judge Benjamin Coker. The only person missing was Romain, who was in federal custody in Florida in a separate criminal case involving charges of conspiring with a Russian national operative to sow discord and disinformation in the United States.
“Let’s try to get him back,” Coker said, before ordering the jurors to be released.
Getting Romain back to Georgia has been a sticky issue for an already bizarre and complicated case. Romain, who uses “they/them” pronouns and is known by the alias Gazi Kodzo, has been caught in a legal tug of war between federal prosecutors, the Fayette County district attorney, state and federal judges and separate defense attorneys.
If it’s not resolved soon, Romain’s state charges in Georgia could be dismissed on a technicality. Romain has demanded a speedy trial, putting state prosecutors on the clock to either take the case to trial or drop the charges.
Defendants have a right to a speedy trial under the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and Georgia law states that if a defendant isn’t given a trial before the end of the next court term after the demand is filed, the charges must be dropped and the defendant acquitted. Stacey Flynn, Romain’s defense attorney in the Georgia case, said she isn’t budging off that demand.
“We’re ready for trial. Mr. Romain has been waiting a year in custody. He wants his day in court,” she said.
Romain, 36, is accused of kidnapping two Black Hammer recruits, chaining them up in the garage of the house the group rented in Fayetteville and forcibly sodomizing one of the men. Romain is also accused of racketeering and operating an illegal street gang. The 32 felony charges include kidnapping, aggravated sodomy and human trafficking, and if Romain is found guilty, they could spend decades in prison.
Chief Assistant District Attorney David Studdard, who is prosecuting the state case, said he has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to release Romain for trial in Georgia, but he said he has no authority to compel a transfer.
“I can request his presence here, but we can’t order the federal government to produce him,” Studdard said in a hearing in Fayetteville last month. “I have requested for him to be produced, and their response to me was ‘maybe.’ I mean, I asked nicely. That’s all you can really do.”
The United States Attorney for the Middle District of Florida declined to comment for this story.
Superior Court Judge Fletcher Sams, who oversaw the July 12 hearing in Georgia, was unconvinced that the district attorney’s office had done enough to get custody of Romain for trial and issued a stern warning.
“If the DA’s intent is to simply lose this case by a technicality and wash their hands of it, I’m not going to allow that,” he said. “My intent is that this case be tried on its merits or dismissed.”
Fayette County Sheriff's Office
Fayette County Sheriff's Office
The Black Hammer Party rose to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks in part to Romain’s provocative behavior online and in the streets of Atlanta. The Black Hammers staged protests and demonstrations that mixed communism and Black nationalism with populist conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 vaccine and the 2020 presidential election.
Bullhorn in hand, Romain threatened local politicians, bragged about the number of guns and gunmen they had collected, and promised bloody revolution. In a string of online stunts, Romain attacked the memory of Anne Frank, picked fights with other leftist organizations, and announced an alliance with the far right Proud Boys.
Aside from occasional arrests for violating noise ordinances during the group’s regular meetings with the homeless in Woodruff Park, the Black Hammers avoided serious criminal trouble until Fayetteville Police received a 911 call last July from a man claiming he had been kidnapped.
The resulting police standoff ended with with arrest of Romain and one of their chief deputies, 22-year-old Xavier “Keno” Hakeem Rushin. A third Black Hammer member, 18-year-old Amonte “AP” Adams, was found in another part of the house dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
A federal indictment unsealed in Florida shortly after the standoff accused Romain and the Black Hammer Party of taking money and direction from Viktorovich Ionov, a Russian national with ties to the Kremlin. The alleged scheme involved staging pro-Russian demonstrations in Atlanta and San Francisco in the months following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as part of an influence operation orchestrated by agents of the Russian security service known as the FSB. Romain was transferred from the Fayette County Jail to federal custody in Florida in April after they were formally charged in the influence scheme.
The federal magistrate judge overseeing the case against Romain and his co-defendants in Florida wrote in an order filed last week that matter “is entirely within the United States’ discretion” and prosecutors just needed to instruct the U.S. Marshal Service to transfer Romain to Georgia.
But the judge worried that letting him go might delay the case if Romain decided to join another defendant’s motion to dismiss the charges. A few days later, Romain’s Florida lawyer filed to join the dismissal motion.
The judge has not yet set a date to hear arguments on the dismissal, but it could come soon. Romain’s case in Fayette County has been rescheduled for later this month, setting up another possible showdown.
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