ATLANTA — The federal trial of suspended Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill is scheduled to begin Wednesday morning with jury selection.
Hill was indicted on federal charges in April of 2021 and suspended as sheriff by Governor Brian Kemp a short time later.
The case will focus on accusations of Victor Hill violating the civil rights of seven detainees inside the Clayton County Jail by ordering them to be placed or being present as they were placed in a restraint chair for hours at a time.
Those individuals according to court records claim being placed in the chair for a long period led to physical pain and bodily injury.
Hill's attorneys have previously said he is being targeted by prosecutors and is innocent.
"Never in the history of this country has the Department of Justice ever prosecuted someone for conduct even remotely similar," Attorney Marissa Goldberg said in a previous interview with 11Alive about the case.
Clayton County voters have overwhelmingly elected Hill to be sheriff four times, in a federal trial. Though his fate will now not only be in the hands of Clayton County residents, but potential jurors that are being called from across the Northern District of Georgia.
“You’ve got a much larger community base. So it isn’t a place where you’ve been elected multiple times over. It is going to be people that know about Victor Hill, maybe they don’t know him, people who have never voted him," Former Federal Prosecutor Michael Sterling said.
A recent ruling by the trial's judge could help prosecutors, according to Sterling. In that order, the judge said she wants the trial to remain focused on the charges against Hill and doesn't want to hear about his well-known persona in Clayton County and his nickname of Batman.
“He wants the jurors to know I’m the person that has been keeping our community safe, I’m tough on crime, these individuals were criminals and the reason I’m being prosecuted is that I’m tough on crime. But the judge has made it clear tough on crime versus whether you’ve violated someone’s civil rights, who was in your custody are two very different things," Sterling said.
He added that prosecutors if they want to be successful in this case may need to make the jurors care about the victims.
“Bring humanization to the victims, right, to have the jury look at them not just as inmates, not just as individuals who were in jail but to humanize them. Anybody potentially could end up in a pre-trial facility. You may not be a bad person, you may not be some terrible person, so that is going to be part of the process and the prosecution's responsibility," Sterling said.
Court records show dozens of witnesses are expected to be called as part of the trial which should last at least two weeks.