Boyd Pleads 'Not Guilty' to Extortion Charge

Hamilton County Commissioner Tim Boyd entered a plea of not guilty to a single charge of extortion, Friday, during an arraignment in Hamilton County Criminal Court.

Criminal Court Judge Andrew Freiberg of Bradley County said he will hear a motion to dismiss the charges on June 5.

Extortion is a Class D Felony and carries a penalty of two to four years in prison.

The extortion charge stems from recorded telephone conversations Boyd had in February with East Ridge Mayor Brent Lambert. Lambert was challenging Boyd, a two term incumbent on the commission, for the Republican nomination for District 8.

Lambert claimed that during the conversations Boyd threatened him with damaging information that would be released by his campaign team during the course of the election. Lambert took the recordings to the Hamilton County District Attorney, who requested the TBI launch an investigation. The DA presented the results of the investigation to a grand jury which indicted Boyd on a charge of extortion in April, the day before early voting began.

Boyd’s attorney, Lee Davis, filed a 14-page motion to dismiss the charges on Thursday. In his motion Davis contends that Boyd’s conversations with Lambert were politically protected speech. Davis also referenced that the “damaging information” that Boyd was referring to was a matter of public record.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.