2000 arrest Kramer was arrested on August 25, 2000, following an investigation spurred by an anonymous tip, and charged with molesting three teenage boys. The investigation revealed that he had previously been accused of molestation in 1997 before the alleged victim recanted. Before Kramer was arrested, he had a reputation for inappropriate relationships. According to
Atlanta magazine, he "was constantly surrounded by young boys". Kramer's first attempt to serve his pre-trial detention in house arrest lasted only a week due to a reported visit by a teenage boy. After that, he was remanded to jail. Kramer subsequently suffered a spinal injury while in jail. In response to that injury, and Kramer's assertion of declining health, Judge Debra Turner allowed him to go back to pre-trial detention in house arrest in January 2001. Protests to "Free Ed" gained the support of science fiction writers
Harlan Ellison,
Anne McCaffrey,
Robert J. Sawyer and
J. Neil Schulman. Conversely, Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter said in September 2010 that Kramer had "done nothing but delay and blame everyone else but himself", agreeing with an assessment that the Georgia Court of Appeals gave in September 2007: "The record strongly indicates that Kramer either sought or knowingly acquiesced in the great majority of the delay and did not want a speedy trial." Kramer and his lawyers disputed this, stating that he had serious health issues that prevented him from sitting through a long trial. In 2008, after seven years of pre-trial detention in house arrest, and numerous delays in his court proceedings, Kramer's travel ban was lifted.
2011 arrest In September 2011, Kramer was arrested after Connecticut police found him in a motel room, unsupervised, with a 14-year-old boy despite being banned from contacting anyone under 18. The felony "risk of injury to a child" was added to the list of charges for which he was to stand trial. In September 2012, Kramer was being held at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution, a maximum security facility in
Suffield, Connecticut, before his extradition to Georgia in January 2013. On April 26, 2013, he was denied the chance to post
bail, as the presiding judge concluded based on past behavior that he was likely to break the conditions of his bond.
Guilty plea to 2000 charges On December 2, 2013, more than thirteen years after his 2000 arrest, Kramer entered an
Alford plea to one charge for each of the three victims, just before his trial was scheduled to start. In 2014, he sought to reverse the 2013 plea, with his lawyer claiming Kramer was forced into the plea bargain through prosecutorial misconduct.
2019 arrest and indictment On February 27, 2019, Kramer was arrested by officers from the Lawrenceville Police Department for allegedly taking photos of a young boy at a doctor's office. On September 18, 2019, Kramer, along with Gwinnett County Judge Kathryn Schrader, was indicted after Schrader allowed Kramer and others improper access to the county's secure computer network. Kramer was later charged with possession of child pornography as a result of that investigation. Judge Schrader was subsequently suspended from
the bench, pending the outcome of a trial.
Plea and trial On February 3, 2020, Kramer entered an
Alford plea of guilty to charges related to trespass into the secure
computer network. On February 18, 2020, Schrader's court case resulted in a
mistrial. ==Bibliography==