Ex-cop's sex assault trial delayed until January

The trial for a former East Point police officer accused in multiple sexual assaults has been postponed due to questions about a witness list, officials said.

Richard Maurice Gooddine’s trial was scheduled to begin Monday, according to court documents. However, Gooddine’s defense counsel “asked for a continuance to review additional records related to the case,” Fulton County District Attorney’s Office spokesman Chris Hopper said in an emailed statement. A Fulton County judge granted the request, and the case was postponed until January.

Gooddine was indicted in September 2018 on 17 counts of inappropriate sexual contact with four female victims in 2011, 2016, 2017 and 2018, AJC.com previously reported. Two of the alleged victims were under the age of 16 at the time of the attacks.

In one case, Gooddine allegedly sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl and then stalked her and her mother at a hospital. Thomas Reyn- olds, an attorney for one of the teenage victims, previously said his client, another girl and two boys were followed from a Waffle House by the officer. The officer approached the group when they stopped at Sykes Park in East Point.

Reynolds said the officer let the girl and two boys go, but detained the 15-year-old for violating curfew. The offi- cer allegedly took the girl to the Village Highlands apartment complex and sexually assaulted her. According to Reynolds, the officer kept the girl for three hours before taking her home. When the girl and her mother went to a hospital, Gooddine arrived and tried to intimidate her and keep her from reporting the incident, according to an indictment. Hospital staff reportedly removed him from the property.

“In my nearly 15 years of experience as a prosecu- tor, I have never heard of a case where an assailant attempted to contact his victim while she was undergoing tests at the hospital,” Dep- uty District Attorney Melissa Redmon previously said in a statement. “His actions were unbelievable.”

In 2011, the Fulton County DA’s Office declined to pros- ecute Gooddine in a sexual battery and child molestation case, saying it would not have been in the best interest of the victim, AJC.com previously reported. He maintained his innocence in that case.

Warrants were issued for Gooddine’s arrest Aug. 31, 2018, and he turned himself in shortly after. He pleaded not guilty to all 17 charges.

Richard Gooddine