The trial of former Dade Sheriff Patrick Cannon (left, in 2009), scheduled for next week, has been put off once again.
The two-term sheriff, defeated by current Sheriff Ray Cross in the 2012 Republican primary, was arrested in July 2015 for multiple violation-of-oath and theft-by-conversion charges, and since then his trial has been postponed from term to term continuously since it was first scheduled in October 2015.
But this time, says Judge Grant Brantley, the continuance was granted not at the request of Cannon, his attorney or the local prosecutor’s office, but to accommodate the judge’s own schedule. “I can’t be but in one place at one time,” said Brantley by phone this afternoon.
Brantley, an Atlanta-area judge, was assigned the Cannon case earlier this year after all the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit judges except for Jon “Bo” Wood recused themselves, and Judge Wood subsequently retired. Brantley had scheduled a pre-trial hearing for Thursday, Oct. 19. That hearing, and the trial itself, which was to have begun Oct. 23, have now been continued until Dade Superior’s next jury trial session in April 2018. Judge Brantley says that’s because he was at the last minute assigned to preside over another trial nearer Atlanta.
“My understanding is that it’s a murder trial,” he said. “The defendant in that case is in custody and the defendant in Dade is not.”
Therefore, said the judge, he had deemed it more prudent to attend to the other case first and put Cannon’s off. He said Cannon’s trial is now expected to be scheduled for either April 16 or 23.
Cannon, who served as Dade's top cop from 2005-2012, faces charges connected with an alleged post-election-defeat shopping spree at a men’s clothing store on the county’s dime, as well as accusations he paid his family phone bills with county funds and converted confiscated property for his own use.
Cannon’s attorney, Chris Townley, filed a motion in 2015 to move the former lawman’s trial to a venue where he is less well known. That motion is still pending, but with virtually every law enforcement officer in Dade subpoenaed as a witness ,moving the trial would be logistically challenging.
That issue would likely have come up in the hearing scheduled for Thursday, and must now wait for April.
Dade Superior has only two jury terms yearly, one in fall and the other in spring.
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