Trial date set for Columbus district attorney, 4 others charged with parking lot damage
A trial date has been set for District Attorney Mark Jones and four others accused of damaging the Columbus Civic Center parking while filming a campaign ad in May 2020.
The trial has been set for Sept. 13, here in Muscogee County, but with an out-of-town judge and prosecutor to avoid any conflict of interest in a criminal case against a local district attorney.
The judge is Bibb County Superior Court Judge Jeffery Monroe, of Georgia’s Macon Judicial Circuit, who was assigned the case on June 29, 2020.
The prosecutor is Brian Vance Patterson of Athens, whom state Attorney General Chris Carr appointed April 20. Patterson will substitute for prosecutor Don Geary of Lawrenceville, whom Carr first appointed on July 10, 2020.
Jones is among those who were charged with the felonies of first-degree criminal damage and interfering with government property after custom-car enthusiasts allegedly left rings of tire residue while “cutting doughnuts,” or spinning their tires while driving in circles on May 17, 2020. The five defendants will be tried together.
The stunt was featured in an ad for Jones as he campaigned against then-incumbent District Attorney Julia Slater for the June 9, 2020, Democratic Primary, which Jones won with 52% of the vote.
Having no Republican opponent in the November General Election, Jones this past January became the chief prosecutor for the six-county Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit that besides Muscogee includes the counties of Chattahoochee, Harris, Marion, Talbot and Taylor.
He came into office with pending felony charges that besides the Civic Center allegations include three counts of serious injury by vehicle, two counts of driving under the influence and one of reckless driving, stemming from a Manchester Expressway crash on Nov. 11, 2019, when police said Jones’ 2016 Jeep Grand Cherokee rear-ended a 2019 Toyota Avalon XL driven by a 51-year-old woman.
That case is expected to be tried separately.
Other suspects
In the Civic Center case, Jones was arrested on May 27, 2020, five days after Columbus police, acting on complaints from the mayor and others, charged two drivers allegedly involved in filming the campaign ad. Investigators later charged two more suspects.
Listed with their attorneys, the defendants indicted with Jones Nov. 3, 2020, on the same felony charges, are:
- Christopher Mandel Black, 24, who’s represented by Stacey Jackson.
- Erik Deangelo Whittington, 25, represented by William Kendrick and Mark Shelnutt.
- Michael Jamaal Garner, 22, represented by Robert Wadkins Jr.
- Jonathan Justo-Botello, 23, represented by Susan Henderson.
Jones, 40, is represented by Christopher Breault, in the Civic Center incident. In the unrelated 2019 car crash, his attorney is Atlanta lawyer William “Bubba” Head, who specializes in DUI cases.
Judge Monroe has set an Aug. 30 hearing on motions that Breault filed Nov. 23, 2020, seeking to dismiss the indictment:
In one filing, Breault claimed the grand jury that indicted Jones and his codefendants was influenced by Slater, who presented other cases to the jurors before Geary, then the assigned out-of-town prosecutor, provided evidence in the Civic Center case.
Slater and her associates “met with, spoke to, smiled with, laughed with, interacted with and influenced members of the grand jury,” Breault wrote, concluding, “For that reason, the indictment of the grand jury is invalid and illegal and must be nullified.”
Breault also asked the court to dismiss the indictment on the claim of selective enforcement, arguing the city picked Jones to prosecute because of his politics.
‘Selective enforcement’
Breault noted no one previously has been convicted of damaging the Civic Center parking lot, though it’s scribbled with tire marks accumulated over the years.
“For many, many years people have come to the civic center parking lot in downtown Columbus, GA because it allows a wide-open space for ‘car recreational culture,’” he wrote, adding that so far no one has been convicted of felonies for “doing a ‘burnout,’ ‘donut,’ or ‘laying drag’ at the Columbus Civic Center.”
Breault alleged Jones’ prosecution was provoked by his campaign’s social media reach, claiming the video with rapper JawGa Boi got 100,000 Facebook views in four days, and reached 1.7 million people in the week before the June election.
This “caused a panic” among city leaders, and it came to a “boiling point” on May 21, 2020, when claims of police misconduct came up during a Facebook Live interview Jones did, Breault wrote.
He claimed Jones was prosecuted “because the ‘Good-ole boy network’ in Columbus, GA could not stomach the fact that Mark Jones — of all people — would become the district attorney of the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit — an ‘unthinkable’ and ‘unacceptable’ outcome.”
That the public did not take the charges seriously was obvious from Jones’ victory in the subsequent election, he wrote: “The public literally laughed this case out of the ballot box.”
Breault said authorities also were provoked by Jones’ pledge to investigate police abuses.
Breault, a supporter and advisor during Jones’ campaign, later helped manage the district attorney-elect’s transition to office.
This past May 20, Jones appointed Breault as a special prosecutor in the case of Hector Arreola, who died after police pinned him down during an arrest in 2017. Breault has vowed to take the evidence in Arreola’s case to a grand jury for review.
The city last week settled a federal lawsuit over Arreola’s death, agreeing to pay the family $500,000.