NEWTON COUNTY, Ga. — Former Newton County Deputy George Rahming has gone from deputy to defendant to state prisoner. But a judge has ruled two of the three counts that sent him to prison should be dropped.
Rahming said he had a lot of hope riding on the June hearing, which concluded just before his interview with Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne.
The former deputy admitted he had sex with a woman he picked up on duty but maintains it was consensual. She accused him of raping her while on duty.
The jury in May found Rahming not guilty on the first three of the six charges on which he was indicted: rape, sexual contact by employee or agent in the first degree and one count of violation of oath by public officer. But the jury found him guilty on three counts of violation of oath.
Rahming’s attorney, Jackie Patterson, says a ruling by judge Cheveda McCamy as a result of that hearing means two of those three guilty verdicts are now dropped unless the prosecution successfully appeals.
The judge found those two counts in the indictment “fatally flawed.”
“While my client and I are satisfied that the judge made the correct ruling on counts five and six and threw those out, but she didn’t go far enough,” Patterson said. “So we’re still unhappy that she did not throw out the count four. So we are appealing that count.”
“I took her to the Circle K, got some food for her and drink for her. And then we left there. We talked. We went to a place, and we engaged in consensual sex, and then I dropped her back off at a store, and I went back to work,” Rahming said.
He told Winne in June he admits having sex with a woman he picked up as she walked along a road while he was on duty as a Newton County deputy in uniform was bad, but he maintained it was not a crime.
“I should be fired, as they did,” he said.
“That is not a crime to violate policy,” Patterson said. “It’s a crime to rape someone, and that is what he did not do.”
In June, then-District Attorney Randy McGinley, whom we’re told is now a superior court judge, said the alleged victim maintained the sex was against her will.
“That’s why we have jury trials,” Patterson said.
Patterson says since the judge originally sentenced Rahming to 15 years, five on each count, but indicated after seven years he could be released on probation, he will have to be resentenced on the single remaining charge, where the max is five years.
The judge ruled with the prosecution in another order. denying the defendant’s motion for a new trial.
The new acting District Attorney, Cliff Howard, indicated the prosecution is weighing whether to appeal the judge’s ruling, which if stands, would in effect drop two of the three counts of which Rahming was convicted.
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