Defendants in Georgia 'Cop City' case say they are in limbo as trial delays continue

ATLANTA (AP) — Single mother Priscilla Grim lost her job. Aspiring writer Julia Dupuis frequently stares at the bedroom ceiling, numb. Geography and environmental studies researcher Hannah Kass is worried about her career prospects after she graduates from her Ph.D. program.

The three are among 61 defendants accused by Republican Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr of participating in a yearslong racketeering conspiracy to halt the construction of a police and firefighter training facility just outside Atlanta that critics pejoratively call “Cop City.”

Their cases are at a standstill, 20 months after being indicted under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, or RICO, which is likely the largest criminal racketeering case ever filed against protesters in U.S. history, experts say.

Trial for five of the defendants was supposed to start last year but got bogged down in procedural issues. The judge overseeing the case then moved to another court. A new judge has set a status hearing for Wednesday.

The delays have left people in limbo, facing charges carrying up to 20 years behind bars for what they maintain was legitimate protest, not domestic terrorism. The case also has suppressed a movement that brought together hundreds of activists to protect a wooded patch of land that ultimately was razed for the recently completed $118 million, 85-acre (34-hectare) project.

Officials say the project is sorely needed to replace outdated facilities and boost officers' morale. Opponents say it will be a training ground for a militarized police force and its construction has worsened environmental damage in a poor, majority-Black area.

Protests escalated after the fatal 2023 shooting of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, known as Tortuguita, who was camping near the site when authorities launched a clearing operation. Officials said they killed Tortuguita, 26, after the activist shot and wounded a trooper from inside a tent.

A family-commissioned autopsy concluded Tortuguita was killed with their hands in the air, but a prosecutor found the officers' use of force was “ objectively reasonable.”

Chris Timmons, a former Georgia prosecutor who has handled numerous RICO cases, said it’s understandable such a large case would take a long time to be scheduled. But Timmons said he is surprised prosecutors don’t seem to be aggressively pushing for a trial date.

“Cases age like milk, not like wine,” Timmons said. “The longer we go, memories fade, witnesses become unavailable. If I were in the prosecutors' shoes, I’d want this case tried as soon as possible.”

The attorney general's office did not respond to requests for comment.

Michael Mears, a professor at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School who studies RICO cases, said prosecutors “boxed themselves in by charging so many people at one time instead of going after the leadership.”

Prosecutors’ decision last year to drop money laundering charges against three of the movement’s alleged leaders was a sign of the case’s weakness. And with the movement having faded from the public consciousness, there is less political appetite for cracking down on the protesters, he said.

“Prosecutors can’t just walk away from it, but I think you’ll probably see it die a slow death,” Mears said, predicting charges would slowly be dismissed.

That is cold comfort for those who say their lives are on hold.

“I think most of our lives are just completely frozen in one way or another,” said Dupuis, 26, who lives in Massachusetts.

Dupuis was charged with felony intimidation of an officer in 2023 for distributing anti-police flyers near the home of one of the troopers who killed Tortuguita, Dupuis’ friend. The trooper called authorities after learning the flyers, which called him a “murderer,” were placed on his neighbors' mailboxes.

Now banned from Georgia, Dupuis struggles to find the motivation to complete freelance copywriting projects that pay for their $650 rent.

“There's a lot I want to do, a lot of hopes and dreams that I feel like are just kind of stuck,” said Dupuis, who dreams of joining New York City’s creative writing scene.

But most of all, Dupuis misses the activist community that once thrived in the South River Forest.

“The charges have ripped me away from my community and the people that I love so much. That’s what I’ve been longing for every single day: to be back with my people," Dupuis said.

Grim, 51, is tired of waiting and recently filed for a speedy trial. It's unclear whether her motion will be granted, since the speedy trial deadline passed long ago.

“Let’s get this over with," Grim said. "If you think you have something on me, let’s do it — which you don’t.”

Grim, who lives in New York City, is one of many “Stop Cop City” defendants who post on social media for financial support to help pay for food and rent. Health insurance is out of the question, despite chronic pain in her knee from a prior accident.

Besides the couple hundred dollars she gets each month from donors she doesn't know, Grim cobbles together funds through freelance work for activist-oriented causes and is focused on helping her daughter get through college.

“I’ve never had such a hard time finding employment,” said Grim, who previously held marketing jobs. “I do really well until the final interview and then everybody goes ghost on me. I think it's because that's when they look my name up.”

Prosecutors say Grim was among a throng of black-clad activists in March 2023 who left a music festival, walked through the woods and overtook the construction site, torching equipment and throwing rocks at retreating officers before returning to blend in with festivalgoers.

Grim said she was in her tent, having woken up from a nap, when officers arrived at the festival and began making arrests. Grim said she began to run before falling due to her knee injury.

“I heard men screaming at me," Grim said, describing what prompted her to run. "That's scary as a woman. They didn't say they were police or anything.”

Authorities, however, said Grim ran upon spotting the officers and tried to hide.

After her arrest, Grim lost an email marketing contract with Fordham University, which had been about to give her a full-time position.

“People know me, and when they hear I'm a ‘domestic terrorist’ they’re like, ‘What? No! What?!’ Grim said. “I’m not just talking about activist friends saying this — these are friends from parent circles.”

On May 12, 2022, a group of protesters gathered in suburban Atlanta outside the offices of Brasfield & Gorrie, the training center's primary contractor. Some set off fireworks as others broke windows and spray-painted “Trees not cops,” causing an estimated $30,000 in damage, authorities said.

Kass, 32, attended the protest but said she never vandalized anything and was engaging in a research method called “participant observation,” which involves immersing oneself in the community being studied.

“I was there as both a scholar and an activist,” said Kass, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies land struggles and teaches environmental social sciences to undergraduates.

Authorities arrested her on charges of felony criminal property damage and felony terroristic threats, saying surveillance video shows she helped set off Roman candles.

Kass underwent a university disciplinary hearing but said the school has supported her. She worries potential employers might not be as understanding.

Like many of her codefendants, Kass rejected prosecutors' plea deal at her RICO arraignment that would have included serving three years in prison.

“I have absolutely nothing to plead guilty for," she said. "I should have every right to protest and believe what I want to believe and associate with whatever political tendencies I wish to associate with.”

Hannah Kass, one of 61 people indicted on racketeering charges in connection with Atlanta's "Stop Cop City" movement, stands in front of Lake Mendota in Madison, Wis., on May 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Scott Bauer)

Priscilla Grim applies electrotherapy pads to her knees on April 18, 2025, at her apartment in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Priscilla Grim is seen on April 18, 2025, at her apartment in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Julia Dupuis, one of 61 activists indicted on racketeering charges in connection with Atlanta's "Stop Cop City" movement, poses for a portrait in Worcester, Mass., on April 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Rodrique Ngowi)

FILE - Noah Gringi holds a sign at a press conference for Manuel Esteban Paez Terán in Decatur, Ga., Feb. 6, 2023. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, File)

FILE - Protesters march during a demonstration in opposition to a new police training center on Nov. 13, 2023, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)

FILE - Bulldozers and heavy trucks are clearing the future site of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, May 30, 2023, in Atlanta. (Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)