Before pleading guilty in 2013 to three counts of child molestation, Kramer was the subject of a long-running legal battle that began with his initial arrest in August 2000.
[7] He has not been involved with Dragon Con planning or activities since 2000,[8] but still owned 34% of the business[9] until Kramer's relationship with the convention was ended in July 2013 in a cash-out merger.
[14] 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.
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.
"[15] Protests to "Free Ed" gained the support of science fiction writers Harlan Ellison, Anne McCaffrey, Robert J. Sawyer and J. Neil Schulman.
[20] In September 2012, Kramer was being held at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution, a maximum security facility in Suffield, Connecticut,[21][22] before his extradition to Georgia in January 2013.
[23] 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.
[24] On December 2, 2013, more than thirteen years after his 2000 arrest, Kramer entered an Alford plea[25] to one charge for each of the three victims, just before his trial was scheduled to start.