Finally, the Tonya Craft trial is over. On Tuesday, the Tonya Craft verdict acquitted the former kindergarten teacher of all 22 counts of child molestation that she was being charged with. But not until after she lost her job at Chickamauga Elementary School, her house in Chickamauga, Ga., and amassed legal bills close to $ 500,000. Tonya Craft has also been separated from her two children for 712 days.
’Witch Hunt’ is the Tonya Craft trial
Tonya Craft supporters are calling the trial as a “witch hunt,” and legal bloggers covering the Tonya Craft trial reported that the prosecutors and judge conspired for a Tonya Craft conviction. After her exoneration, Tonya Craft appeared on the “Today” show Wednesday morning and will be featured on Larry King Live Wednesday night.
Tonya craft stared on ‘Today’
Tonya Craft’s verdict kept her from getting sentenced to 400 years in prison. These legal costs might leave her needing a cash loan. She told NBC’s “Today” on Wednesday that it wasn’t a victory because of that very reason. “There’s nobody that wins in this situation. My whole heart has been taken, and I got half of it back.” Craft said she hoped the truth would come out but was “scared to death” it wouldn’t. She talked about how hard it was to see her daughter testify against her.
“That was the absolute hardest thing I’ve ever experienced, because my job as a mother is to protect her,” Craft said. “There obviously was no anger towards her. It absolutely broke my heart to see that my daughter had been pretty much indoctrinated to believe things that weren’t true.”
Tonya Craft and misconduct at the trial
Following the Tonya Craft verdict, Demosthenes Lorandos, Craft’s attorney, told The Associated Press that he and Craft’s other attorneys contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. attorney’s office about what he called the “fraudulent” behavior of Judge Brian House and the Catoosa County district attorney’s office during the case.
Circus is the local media
April 13, the Tonya Craft trial began. The proceedings have seemed a local media circus. Tag lines and logos have been given to the case by local TV news programs. Breathless anchors showed up on the screen throughout the whole day with promises of “graphic testimony.” The “Tonya Craft Trial” on News Channel 9 and “Tonya Craft: Teacher on Trial” on “WCRB — News you can count on,” competed for ratings and website hits with constant updates on all the sordid details.
Prosecutor conspiracy against Tonya Craft?
Players in the Tonya Craft trial exhibited questionable behavior that suggested judicial misconduct. Cato-at-liberty.org reports that the judge sitting on the case represented the defendant’s husband in their divorce. Defense attorneys asked the judge to step down but he refused. Blogger William Anderson, who has been covering the trial, reports that with the trial pending, the prosecutor, Len Gregor, wrote status updates on Facebook that included many comments by witnesses. Anderson wrote to the defendant after the Tonya Craft verdict:
What was done to you was criminal: no other word will suffice. Indeed, if you want to know where the REAL conspiracy was centered, it was in that courtroom, as a judge and his two henchmen conspired time and again to deprive you of your civil rights to a fair trial. Let me be more specific. House (the judge), Arnt, and Gregor (the prosecutors) were not guilty of overzealousness or even bad judgment. What they did was much, much worse because they teamed up to keep much of the evidence that would have exonerated you out of the courtroom. They harassed your witnesses and then called your four expert witnesses, who are well-respected in their fields (to put it mildly), “whores” and liars.
The Tonya Craft verdict of not guilty on all 22 counts
Tonya Craft was arrested in June 2008 and accused of molesting three girls in her home between August 2005 and May 2007. A jury began debating her case Monday afternoon after a five week trial. On Tuesday, they found her not guilty of all 22 counts, including child molestation, sexual battery and aggravated child molestation. Craft’s chief attorney, Dr. Demosthenes Lorandos, said on the “Today” show that his client had been receiving death threats, and that is why he hurried her out of the courtroom after the Tonya Craft verdict.
Sources for the article:
“Today” show Wednesday morning
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/37103788/ns/today-today_people/
The Associated Press
http://www.ap.org/
Blogger William Anderson
http://williamlanderson.blogspot.com/search/label/Tonya%20Craft
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This post was written by admin on July 31, 2010
