Appeal hearing set for disqualified sheriff’s candidates

With the start of early voting for May 24 party primaries just 17 days away, an outside judge has been appointed and a hearing set for two Muscogee sheriff candidates’ appealing the county elections board’s disqualifying them.

Joseph Baden, the district court administrator for the Third Judicial Administrative District, has appointed Senior Superior Court Judge J. Richard Porter III of Cairo to hear appeals from Democratic Party candidates Pamela Brown and Robert Keith Smith, whom the board disqualified for failing to meet a March 16 deadline to be fingerprinted for a criminal background check.

On March 30, the elections board voted three to one to disqualify the candidates, who said then that they would appeal to Superior Court.

Porter has set a hearing for 9:30 a.m. Tuesday in Courtroom I of the Columbus Recorder’s Court building at 702 10th St. All Government Center courtrooms were reserved for trials, authorities said.

Gil McBride, chief judge for the six-county Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit that includes Muscogee, said election disputes automatically go to the district administrator for the appointment of an outside judge, so individual judges within the circuit did not have to recuse themselves. The protocol prevents the appearance of local judges’ influencing elections.

In Brown’s appeal filed April 7, attorney J. Mark Shelnutt recounted some of the same points he made at the elections board meeting: He wrote that Brown already had been fingerprinted and vetted when she ran for sheriff in 2012, and would have met the deadline for the coming May 24 Democratic Primary had anyone been available to collect her fingerprints on March 16.

The law says the fingerprinting is to be completed under the direction of the county probate judge. Typically candidates are fingerprinted at the sheriff’s office.

When she ran for sheriff in 2012, Probate Judge Marc D’Antonio allowed Brown — who worked 23 years for the sheriff’s office and nearly unseated incumbent John Darr four years ago — to get fingerprinted at the police department, to avoid any confrontations with former colleagues.

When Brown learned this year that she was about to miss the deadline, she went back to the police department, but was told no one was available to get her prints, and she would have to return the next day. She did, and D’Antonio later found nothing in her criminal history that would have disqualified her from the race.

Shelnutt asks that a judge first order a stay in the board’s decision, then reverse it to ensure Brown remains a viable candidate.

Elections director Nancy Boren has said Brown’s name can’t be removed from ballots, because they’ve already been printed. If a judge does not alter the board’s decision, election workers will post notices at voting polls informing voters of the disqualification, Boren said.

Georgia law says the Superior Court judge reviewing an election board’s decision may affirm it, send it back for further proceedings, or reverse or modify it “if substantial rights of the appellant have been prejudiced because the findings, inferences, conclusions, or decisions” violate the constitution or other laws, or they exceed the board’s authority, are based on unlawful procedures or other legal error, clearly erroneous in light of the evidence, or “arbitrary or capricious or characterized by an abuse of discretion.”

Both Brown and Smith qualified as Democrats. If the board’s decision is upheld, it effectively eliminates a contested Democratic Primary for sheriff, leaving former sheriff’s Capt. Donna Tompkins as the sole primary candidate. Darr has said he will run as an independent. His only other challenger is Republican Mark LaJoye, so the race would be decided during the November general election.

The voter registration deadline for the May 24 election is April 26. Early voting will be every day May 2 through May 20 in the Community Room of the City Services Center, 3111 Citizens Way, off Macon Road by the Columbus Public Library. The schedule will be 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday-Friday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.

This story was originally published April 15, 2016 at 5:07 PM with the headline "Appeal hearing set for disqualified sheriff’s candidates."