Injustice in Georgia: The Ed Kramer Case

Were you taught in school that every person is innocent until proven guilty by a court of law?

Were you taught that one of the rights of every American citizen is the right to a free trial?

Then how will you feel when I tell you that there is a man in Georgia right now who has been in and out of prison and on house arrest for seven years, without having been convicted of anything, or even brought to trial?

That man is Ed Kramer, once a well-respected editor, literary agent and anthologist in the fields of science fiction and horror, and a founder of the largest Science Fiction convention in the United States, DragonCon.

It all began in August, 2000. Ed was arrested following an anonymous phone call. He was accused of aggravated child molestation, surely a heinous crime, but one of which Ed has never been convicted. The evidence has never even been presented. Let me emphasis: in seven years of imprisonment or house arrest, Ed has never been brought to trial! He has been denied the right to attend synagogue, denied medical treatment, beaten, abused, maligned, and has served the equivalent of thirteen years under Georgia's definition of "time served." The case has been documented in the press and online, but nothing has been done about this terrible injustice.

Let me stress here: only Ed and his alleged "victims" know whether he is guilty or not. I do have a slight acquaintance with the man, and I don't know, though I doubt it. But that is not the point. It is for a court to decide the guilt or innocence of anyone accused of any crime in this country. And this is to be done quickly. In fact, Georgia mandates no more than eight months should pass between the accusation and the trial,[''Scandrett v. State'', 279 Ga. 632 (2005)] Yet when Ed's lawyer has tried to file a dismissal motion in 2006, it has been thrown out of court. A motion has been filed.

While Ed was being detained awaiting trial at the Gwinnett County Detention Center, court records indicate that sherrif's deputies told other inmates to stay away from Kramer because "the Sheriff's Department is going to hang that Jewish son-of-a-bitch." I repeat, that quote is from court records.

A short time later, while still being detained without trial, Ed Kramer suffered a traumatic brain injury after being attacked by a sheriff's deputy during a drill. This attack was unprovoked. The deputy was masked. In Gwinnett, a company known as Prison Health Services is responsible for prisoners' medical needs. Despite an MRI that clearly showed spinal cord injury, PHC treated Ed only with aspirin and motrin. All this is documented. Since that attack, Ed has undergone many surgeries, and is now permanently disabled.

This may seem less hard to believe if I mention here that this is the same facility where Deacon Fred Williams was TASER'd to death by eleven deputies in 2005, and that there have been many documented cases of apparent abuse of prisoners in this facility.

Attorney Isaac M. Jaroslawicz, fomer Direcotr of Legal Affaris of the Aleph Istitute, noted that,"It appears that the medical and security staff at the Gwinnett County Detention Center violated every moral, ethical and professional standard that could apply," The Aleph Institute is a national non-profit organization which provides assistance to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Earlier this year, Mr. Kramer's mother, who is 84 years old and was decorated as a member of the Women's Army Corp after having lost both her mother and her sister to the Nazis in Niska, attempted to visit Georgia governor Sonny Perdue in person at the State Capital to plead her son's desperate need for medical care. His life and health have been utterly destroyed, and he has been held longer than any other case in Georgia without trial. She was not able to meet with Mr. Perdue himself, but was assured by an exeuctive assistant to Mr. Perdue, Norris Smith, that the governor would give the case his "full attention."

Shortly thereafter, the governor sent a letter thanking Ed's mother for making her aware of his urgent need, and expressing his regret that ""The Georgia Constitution prohibits me from intervening... I regret that I cannot help you further and hope you understand the limitations of my authority in this situation."

According to the Ed Kramer Defense Fund website, Ed's "legal fees to date have exceeded $200,000; his medical expenses twice that."

But even more than the ruin of his health, and the terrible financial burden, there is this fact:

Ed has been punished excessively for a crime for which he has never stood trial, never been convicted,
never even had a hearing.

This is not supposed to happen in America. This is not supposed to happen in Georgia. This is not supposed to happen!

Where is the outrage?