AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – A jury acquitted the Thomson mayor Tuesday of trying to sneak some liquor to prison inmates – something his attorneys portrayed as just a misunderstood accident.
Mayor Benji Cranford had been suspended by the governor after his arrest, but with his acquittal, the suspension was automatically lifted.
He was accused of buying a bottle of gin on June 3 and then driving across the street and intentionally stashing it in a ditch where an approaching prison work crew could find it as the inmates picked up trash.
His attorneys claim the gin – which he bought as a malaria remedy – fell out of his car when he stopped to make a technologically clumsy attempt to reconnect his Bluetooth.
The trial began Monday and continued into Tuesday, with jurors starting to deliberate in the afternoon.
Jurors reached a verdict around 4 p.m.
The verdict clearing him of both counts came after testimony of the final prosecution witnesses on Tuesday and after jurors heard from the mayor himself.
Cranford was indicted by a grand jury and arrested in August by GBI officers who led him away from city offices in handcuffs.
He testified Tuesday that he had no idea as the City Council met that he was about to be arrested – something that was caught on News 12 cameras as we were there to cover the council meeting.
However, GBI Special Agent Kris Lapham testified Tuesday he tried to contact Cranford four times, talked with him on the phone and told him what it was about and that he needed to come to the GBI office to talk, but Cranford never showed up.
Cranford said he had not been contacted prior by someone saying there was a warrant for his arrest.
“If someone wants to question someone you’d think they come find you not try and call you on the phone,” Cranford said on the stand Tuesday.
He said that on June 3, he wasn’t working and had just gotten back from a beach trip.
He said he bought the gin because a doctor friend told him about a remedy involving the liquor.
“If you drink gin, you won’t get malaria,” he testified the doctor told him.
“Look he is my friend. I drink his alcohol, he drinks my alcohol,” he testified.
A quick search of the internet shows gin on its own does not prevent malaria. Quinine – the active ingredient in tonic water, a frequent gin mixer – does prevent malaria. However, you’d have to drink nearly 70 quarts of it to get enough quinine to prevent the mosquito-transmitted disease.
Cranford and his attorneys asserted in the trial that stopping the car on the side of the ditch was all part of his effort to reconnect his Bluetooth.
He testified that sometimes when he leaves his car with his phone, it will disconnect from Bluetooth.
His attorney noted that records showed he was, indeed, on the phone while walking into Rimpy’s store and that there was later another phone call.
Cranford testified that he “assumes” based on looking at his phone records that he was on a call when he pulled up to Rimpy’s.
Cranford said he is on the phone a lot “phone never stops ringing.” That included roughly 50 phone calls on June 3, he said.
He said he “speculates” that he opened and closed the car door to reconnect the Bluetooth after stopping across the street from the store.
Prosecutors asked him to explain why opening and closing a car door reconnects the Bluetooth, and Cranford said:
“That’s the way I’ve always done it. If that’s the right way or the wrong way, you tell me.”
Using similar language to what his attorney said the day before, he said he is “not tech savvy.”
When asked why he went across the road, he said: “I don’t have a clue. Maybe I didn’t want to open the door to ongoing traffic – after thinking about it, I don’t know why I did that.”
Also on Tuesday, the prosecution went over a statement from a prison bus driver to the GBI saying that he saw a door to the car open next to the ditch and it looked like someone was trying to put something on the ground before driving away.
The bus driver testified on Monday that his suspicion was aroused, and that’s when he went over to the ditch and found the bottle and photographed it.
Then after Cranford turned around and came past again, the bus driver took a picture of Cranford’s license plate.
When asked Tuesday why he turned around, Cranford testified: “I turned around for a reason. What that reason is, I’m not sure.”
An employee at Rimpy’s testified Tuesday that Cranford came to the store two to three times a week. She said she never sold him the brand of gin he’s accused of buying, saying he usually purchased another variety. She said he would sometimes buy alcohol for other people – sometimes buy shooters for people in line behind him.
Cranford testified Tuesday:
“If they are a part of my party, I do buy them alcohol. If it’s some random person, I don’t do that.”
As a prosecution witness, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Kris Lapham said surveillance video shows Cranford on the way to his car separating one of the two bottles of alcohol he bought, putting one behind the driver’s seat and one on the passenger side.
A prosecutor asked Cranford Tuesday why he put a bottle between his seat and the door.
The mayor answered: “I’m sure there is a cup holder in that door I attempted to put it there.”
He said in his eyes, he didn’t think he lost a bottle of gin that day.
“I don’t remember that day,” he said, but he added: “I do remember I didn’t give no liquor to no inmates.”
Also on Tuesday, the prosecution went over a statement from a prison bus driver to the GBI saying that he saw a door to the car open and it looked like someone was trying to put something on the ground. The bus driver testified on Monday that his suspicion was aroused, and that’s when he went over to the ditch and found the bottle.
Officials testified Tuesday that they could find no connection between Cranford and any of the inmates who were picking up trash along the road.
Cranford also claimed in his testimony Tuesday that he didn’t know anyone on the work crew and isn’t familiar with anyone at the Jefferson County Correctional Institution, where the prisoners are housed.
In his closing arguments, defense attorney Keith Johnson urged the jury to use “common sense,” saying prosecutors’ argument lacked common sense.
Apparently referring to Cranford’s arrest at the town offices in front of TV cameras, Johnson said:
“Ask yourself, ‘Why did they treat this man the way they did?’
“He is guilty of nothing. It is a full acquittal. Let this man get back to work,” Johnson said. “He’s at the pinnacle of his professional career. Do you really think he is going to ruin that?”
Prosecutor Terry Lloyd told jurors if Cranford was embarrassed at being arrested on camera, it was “his own fault, nobody else’s.”
He asserted that the loss of the gin wasn’t accidental.
“Everyone makes mistakes,” Lloyd said, “but this was not a mistake; this was a choice he made.”
Reacting to the verdict, the District Attorney’s Office said:
“We handed the case like any other case. We make decisions based on fact, not how powerful someone is. Law enforcement did their job, the jury did their job, we did our job and this is a result. We wish Mayor Cranford well and hope he will continue to lead our city in the right direction.”
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