Judge Dismisses RICO Charges Against All 'Cop City' Defendants
Two years after the state attorney general charged dozens of protesters with racketeering, a judge found the case unconvincing.
For years, activists in Atlanta have opposed the construction of a police training facility, while state authorities have prosecuted them using a law intended to go after mobsters. This week, a judge stepped in on behalf of the protesters.
"A Georgia judge on Tuesday said he will toss the racketeering charges against all 61 defendants accused of a yearslong conspiracy to halt the construction of a police and firefighter training facility that critics pejoratively call 'Cop City,'" R.J. Rico wrote Tuesday for the Associated Press.
As Reason has written extensively, activists have opposed the project—officially named the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center—since it was first announced in 2021. They objected to what they deemed "a police militarization facility for police to train in urban warfare," and they resented its construction on 85 acres of forested land. For months, people camped out in the forest to prevent construction, occasionally clashing with police attempting to clear the forest. In January 2023, police shot and killed protester Manuel Paez Terán; police say Paez Terán fired first, but autopsies later suggested otherwise.
In September 2023, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr charged 61 protesters under the state's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, originally drafted to prosecute the Mafia. If convicted, defendants faced between five and 20 years in prison.
But most of the defendants listed in the indictment were not even accused of committing any violent acts; in fact, as is often true with RICO cases, prosecutors must merely show the existence of a criminal enterprise, and then any member can be charged as an accessory to the group's overall crimes.
Carr alleged in his indictment that the protesters belonged to Defend the Atlanta Forest, "a self-identified coalition and enterprise of militant anarchists, eco-activists, and community organizers." (As one activist told Reason, "Stop Cop City and Defend the Atlanta Forest are not even informally organized groups," much less the centralized network of terrorists and troublemakers that prosecutors depicted.)
But under a RICO indictment, prosecutors don't need to show all of the defendants are dangerous: Of the 61 defendants, five were charged with setting fire to police cars during a protest march, and three people who operate a bail fund were charged with money laundering, but the rest were accused of nothing more serious than camping in the forest or refusing to leave when police asked. (Carr's office dropped the money laundering charges in September 2024.)
This week, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kevin Farmer tossed out the RICO charges, effectively removing most of the defendants from the prosecution. Farmer said Carr didn't follow proper procedures when he originally brought the case; Farmer says such a case would require the permission of the governor, which prosecutors admitted they did not get.
"At this time, I do not find the Attorney General had the authority to bring this RICO case," Farmer agreed, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "The mechanisms were in place and the steps just weren't followed."
In fact, the case has been fraught from the start. Soon after Carr announced the charges, defendant Ayla King filed a motion for a speedy trial; after more than a year of delays, Farmer declared a mistrial in July.
Last year, defendants accused prosecutors of mishandling privileged communications when emails between attorneys and clients were included in a tranche of evidence distributed to investigators and attorneys. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Esmond Adams, who oversaw the case at the time, accused Carr's office of "gross negligence," adding, "the State is strongly admonished that future misconduct will result in additional sanctions as determined appropriate."
Of course, this isn't the end of the line for the defendants. While most were only charged with RICO, the five protesters accused of burning a police car were also charged with arson and domestic terrorism. "Farmer said Carr also didn't have the authority to pursue the arson charge, though he believes the domestic terrorism charge can stand," according to the Associated Press. Ironically, the arson charge would be the more defensible of the two. The state has also indicated that it intends to appeal Farmer's decision.
Still, it's a comfort that most of the defendants may no longer have to contend with the prospect of spending many years in prison when they were only ever accused of petty misdemeanors or minor annoyances.
A local attorney and activist told Reason in 2023 that the prosecution was less about public safety than about burnishing Carr's political career for a potential future run for governor; last year, Carr announced that he would run for governor in 2026.
"Today's proceedings are the latest proof of what we've always known: Police and prosecutors have been conspiring over years to pursue a fundamentally illegitimate legal strategy against their perceived political enemies," Marlon Kautz, one of the defendants, told Reason in a statement. "They have known all along that they lack the evidence, the legal standing, and the constitutional right to target protesters in this way, but they are willing to do it anyway because they believe they can get away with it. They are wrong, they will not get away with it."
