Teacher, Tonya Craft, Cleared Of Molestation Charges
The Tonya Craft trial — the Chickamauga battle that became national news — 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 characterized the trial as a “witch hunt,” and legal bloggers 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.
On ‘Today’ is Tonya Craft
The Tonya Craft verdict spares the defendant from a sentence of up to 400 years in prison. But her legal costs may leave her in need of a cash loan. That’s just one of the reasons, she told NBC’s “Today” on Wednesday, that the Tonya Craft verdict wasn’t a victory. “There’s nobody that wins in this situation. My whole heart has been taken, and I got half of it back.” Craft said she was “scared to death” that the truth wouldn’t come out although she was still hopeful. She described watching 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.
Local media circus
The Tonya Craft trial commenced April 13. The proceedings have definitely been a local media circus. Local TV news programs branded the case with tag lines and logos. Breathless anchors popped up on the screen throughout the day with the promise 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 many ratings and website hits with constant updates on all the sordid details.
Tonya Craft and conspiracy against her by Prosecutor?
Many of the players in the Tonya Craft trial showed questionable behavior that suggested Judicial misconduct. The judge sitting on the case represented the defendant’s husband in their divorce according to Cato-at-liberty.org. Defense attorneys asked the judge to step down but he refused. Blogger William Anderson has been covering the trial and reports that with the trial pending, the prosecutor, Len Gregor, wrote status updates on Facebook that included comments by witnesses. After Tonya Craft’s verdict was set, Anderson wrote to the defendant:
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. After a five-week trial that became a modern day Chickamauga battlefield for the media, a jury began debating her case Monday afternoon. 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 he hurried her out of the courtroom after the Tonya Craft verdict.
