Trammell guilty on 51 counts
Former SCLC leader free on bond until June 27 sentencing.
DAYTON —
The Rev. Raleigh Trammell, the local activist who rose to the top of national Southern Christian Leadership Conference, will find out June 27 if he will return to prison.
Trammell, 74, was convicted Friday on 51 felony counts related to a home-delivered meals service run from the headquarters of the SCLC Dayton chapter.
Defense attorney Martin Pinales promised an appeal, but declined to comment further.
Pinales added: “I want to go spend some time with my client right now.”
Minutes earlier, Trammell had left the courtroom silently. Common pleas Judge Michael L. Tucker declined to revoke Trammell’s bond, finding he wasn’t a flight risk or danger to the community, so he will remain free until sentencing.
“We think that justice has been a long time coming in this case,” said assistant county prosecutor Dan Brandt. “Justice was served.”
Brandt also credited a Dayton Daily News investigation into Trammell’s operations, which led to the indictments.
It’s unclear how much prison time Trammell could face. The highest level charges were third-degree felonies, punishable by up to 36 months in prison. Trammell was convicted of 25 of them.
But assistant Montgomery County prosecutors said they did not know if any of the charges would merge for the purposes of sentencing, and that they would be researching that issue before submitting a sentencing report.
Prosecutors contended that the county reimbursed $38,000 to the SCLC for 7,000 meals that were not delivered between 2005 and early 2010. Two of the people whom Trammell claimed to feed were dead, two had never heard of his program and three were in longterm care facilities and not receiving extra meals, according to prosecutors.
Keith Lander, a Trammell critic who recently resigned from the local SCLC board, said he wasn’t surprised by the verdict.
“It’s a shame and a sin, what he did with the money that was going to go to the poor,” Lander said. “And consciously did it.”
He also said that other SCLC employees who knew what was happening and did nothing were “just as guilty.”
Bishop Richard Cox, the current chairman of the SCLC’s Dayton chapter and a Trammell ally, said he was saddened by the convictions.
“I don’t think that he had criminal intent,” Cox said. “He just had people around him who did not keep adequate records for him.”
Cox said Trammell did many good things for the community, being the voice for the voiceless and standing up when others did not.
“He trained me,” Cox said. “I’m a product of Raleigh Trammell.”
Trammell was a recently paroled ex-convict when he took over the Dayton branch of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference three decades ago.
A jury convicted Trammell of opening fraudulent welfare accounts in 1973 and 1974.
He used a man who had consulted him about marital problems to cash welfare checks and redeem food stamps for him.
Sentenced to four to 10 years in prison for larceny and grand theft, Tramell served just over a year before receiving parole in 1980. number of people coming in for help. We help felons, but we also help people with college degrees and years of experience. They can’t find jobs, either.”
Friday’s jobs report was a reflection of an unexpected slowdown in economic growth, similar to slowdowns in 2011 and 2010 entering the summer months, noted John Challenger, a labor market researcher and chief executive of international outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
The U.S. Commerce Department said earlier this week that first-quarter economic growth rose at an annual rate of 1.9 percent, lower than the 2.2 percent growth in the nation’s gross domestic product previously forecast.
“That’s anemic growth, and that’s going to lead to limited hiring,” Challenger said. “We’re in a period right now where companies are very cautious about doing too much hiring. They’re worried the economy is flat, and it’s too risky to hire too many workers. They don’t want to have to lay them off if, all of a sudden, their business turns down.”