Former Warner Robins employee sues ex-mayor, says he was maliciously prosecuted
.JPG "Gary Lee, director of the Warner Robins Economic Development Department, is shown at right in this 2014 file photo. Lee has been suspended without pay after his indictment on a felony charge of giving a false statement to a Houston County sheriff’s investigator during a criminal investigation. Lee is innocent of charges against him, one of his attorneys said Friday.")
Year after an ordeal that saw him suspended and criminally charged before being exonerated and reinstated, Warner Robins’ former economic development director is suing former Mayor Randy Toms, alleging he had false information put in his personnel file and was punished for trying to point out the falsehoods, according to court records filed Friday.
Gary D. Lee, the former executive director of economic development for Warner Robins, filed his lawsuit in federal court, alleging Toms violated several of his constitutional rights by making false statements against him in 2018, prompting a significant fallout, the lawsuit says.
Lee says in his lawsuit that the ordeal started when he discovered that his signature was forged in a document that said he went through a substance abuse program. Lee never went through such a program, he says, and he reported the error to Toms.
Lee’s lawsuit says that after reporting the issue to Toms, he was wrongfully arrested and maliciously prosecuted as retaliation. As a result, he was indicted on March 26, 2019, on a felony charge of making a false statement to an investigator and two misdemeanor charges of falsely reporting a crime.
The actions by Toms and the city violated his First, Fourth, and 14th Amendment rights, the lawsuit alleges.
He also says he was humiliated and his reputation was damaged after Toms’ willful, intentional, and reckless disregard for Lee’s rights, according to the lawsuit. He seeks damages and a jury trial.
Lee now works as the city administrator and the economic development director for Fort Valley, according to his LinkedIn profile. Toms served as the Warner Robins mayor from 2014 to 2021, and now works as the executive director of the Georgia Firefighter Standards and Training Council, a position he has held since March 2022.
Toms and representatives for the city of Warner Robins have not responded to requests for comment before publication.
City council found ‘established pattern of wrongdoing’
Lee’s lawsuit says he discovered the allegedly forged document in the spring of 2018 and asked for an investigation into the issue.
Lee alleges Toms used the false document and the request for an investigation to have Lee suspended and prosecuted, the lawsuit said.
Toms allegedly enlisted former Houston County District Attorney George Hartwig to investigate Lee. The district attorney directed a third-year law student to find something against Lee and told them to keep the investigation a secret, according to the lawsuit. Hartwig is not being sued in Lee’s new court case.
The lawsuit alleges that the law student at the time told Hartwig they didn’t find anything incriminating against Lee and, if the investigation continued, they would violate Lee’s constitutional rights.
The Houston County Sheriff’s Office, however, investigated Lee’s claims and eventually determined that he did sign the document. Their findings led to Lee being indicted.
Hartwig also attempted to charge Lee with terroristic threats, but he backed away from that charge in October 2018, according to prior Telegraph reporting. Lee allegedly told another Warner Robins official he was “going to cut her head off,” but Hartwig stated that Lee called the official to apologize, and the official was not present when he made the alleged threat.
Lee was suspended from his job as executive director due to the pending indictment. But Lee appealed the suspension on April 16, 2019. The Warner Robins City Council investigated the matter, and his suspension was lifted in May 2019, according to prior Telegraph reporting.
The council explained that “multiple memos and statements to Council indisputably support an established pattern of wrongdoing, including, but not limited to, acts of maleficence, HR file tampering, false documents, keys to HR being passed around, and failure of due process,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also said the city failed to adhere to “the Whistleblower policy” and that policy could have prevented a wrongful indictment.
Lee’s case was dismissed on Nov. 7, 2023, with a prosecutor from the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit stating there was not enough evidence against him, according to the lawsuit.
