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“I never thought that anything would affect me this much in my life. We were all emotional at one point or another. I cried for the first time in years, being a part of this.” -- Juror

For five weeks, a 12-member jury spent more time with one another than they sometimes did with their own families. They sat quietly, listened to hours of testimony, and on Tuesday, May 11, acquitted Tonya Craft, who was facing 22 counts of child molestation, aggravated sexual battery and aggravated child molestation.

For one juror, the responsibility, the pressure and the magnitude of what the group was asked to decide was more than he bargained for.

“Butch,” who asked that his real name not be revealed in this article, sat down on his front porch Friday eve-ning, May 14, and told the story of how he and 11 others decided what was the truth in a case that divided the com-munity in which they live.

“Butch” said the two-day deliberation had its share of ups and downs.

“I’ll say one thing — we had great jurors from all walks of life, and everybody really did a good job of watching closely,” he said.

According to Butch, he had no knowledge of any of the details of the case before becoming a juror. “I didn’t know the first thing about the allegations,” he said. “Better yet, I had never heard of Tonya Craft before I was called in for duty.”

Butch said friends and family tried to fill him in a little before he answered his summons, but he felt it would be better to go into the ordeal without any preconceived notions or second-hand information. “I just wanted to go in there and do the best I could, and if I got picked, I was going to let the evidence and the arguments speak for itself.”

After four weeks of testimony, which included three little girls taking the witness stand telling the court about how Craft had allegedly touched them inappropriately, Butch and his peers retired to a little room to sort through their feelings as to whether the former kindergarten teacher had committed the acts that brought them all there.

“The closing arguments ran a little late, which bothered some of us a little bit, because we sure were hungry,” Butch said. “But when we began discussing it at about 2:30 p.m. (on Monday, May 10), I was really afraid that I (would be) the only one that felt as though she was an innocent woman.”

Butch said the initial plan was for the group to take a preliminary vote to establish where they all were and where they would need to go to reach a unanimous decision. “Right before we were gonna do the vote, another juror suggested that we just take some time and talk about it a little first,” Butch said. “We really wanted to review some of the evidence. It had been nearly three weeks since the children had taken the stand and we wanted to look over the video of the interviews they’d done when the allegations came out, and we also wanted to have the court re-porter read back some of their testimonies to us.”

Butch said that, much to the disbelief of him and the other jurors, requests they sent to Judge Brian House to re-examine evidence was denied.

“We just couldn’t understand it, to be honest with you,” Butch said. “How can you make a decision like the one we were expected to make without looking at every piece of evidence as closely as possible?”

Butch said that because they didn’t have a lot of time following closing arguments and because they were no-where near close to a decision, they were sent home around 4:30 p.m. on May 10.

That night became one of the toughest he has endured in his entire life, he said.

“I went home not really having any idea about how the others felt about it all. It was a really scary though,” he said. “I didn’t know if I was alone in my opinion of it all and I didn’t sleep at all that night. I knew there was no way that she’d done what they were accusing her of. I feel very strongly about things like this. People who would do things like this to a child deserved to be punished to the extreme and I didn’t feel that there way any way she could’ve done this like they were saying she did.”

Butch said when they arrived at the courthouse Tuesday morning, May 11, the jury took a preliminary vote and 11 of the 12 jurors voted innocent, while one woman believed her to be guilty.

“One woman on the jury had a hard time believing that three different children would say that these things had happened to them if it hadn’t,” Butch said. “We thought she was going to hang the jury in the beginning, but after we talked it over some and discussed the evidence and things a little further, she decided to vote the same way we were. It really came down to the simple fact that it didn’t matter if she hung us or not, another trial would have proved the same thing, that there was no real evidence that she’d done these things to those girls. The twelve of us decided that it would be better to not put those kids through this whole ordeal again, so that lady went ahead and joined the other 11 of us, and that was that.”

Butch also touched on how the closing arguments made by each counsel affected their decisions for delibera-tions began.

“As far as I was concerned, and the other jurors told me they felt the same way, neither closing argument really swayed us one way or the other, the prosecution especially,” Butch said. “That fella that closed things for them (lead prosecutor Chris Arnt), he lied about testimony, trying to confuse us…. and every one of us caught it too.”

Butch said that after they came to an agreement mid-day on Tuesday, he felt just as strongly as he did when they broke for lunch after closing arguments the day before.

“I felt strongly that she didn’t do it, and if every one of the jurors had been against me, I still wouldn’t have changed my mind. Luckily enough, we all stood behind the decision we had made, and we knew then and we know now that we did the right thing without a doubt,” he said.

“To be honest, I know that every juror would like to forget about it, because the whole trial should never have taken place,” Butch said. “That tall prosecutor (Len Gregor), he wanted it so bad, and he kept getting mad when something went different than the way he wanted it. The evidence just wasn’t there and they found it out the hard way.”

Butch recalled the electricity in the room and the emotion that followed the reading of the verdict.

“I wish there was a camera on their faces when it was read — Judge House, (Catoosa County sheriff’s detective) Tim Deal, the prosecutors, (the mother of one of the alleged girl victims), all of them,” he said. “Judge House seemed to be in shock, but most of all, I looked at Tonya. I saw her as they read each individual count, and with each one she fell a little lower and a little lower, until finally on the last one, her attorneys had to kind of hold her up.”

“It was a waste of the county’s money if you ask me,” he said.

“You can’t attack a person’s personal life just because you don’t have the evidence to prove your point. The fact of the matter is, nobody is perfect, everybody’s done things that they’re not proud of. But that doesn’t mean that it’s in them to hurt a child the way they were trying let on,” Butch said.

“The really scary part is that it can happen to anybody. It could even happen to me. I’ve got a little grandson, and all it would take was for somebody to say I was putting medicine on him the wrong way or something, and then I’d be right where Tonya was with all this….and there’s no way I could ever afford to defend myself the way she did. I’m a broke old man.”

Now, as Butch tries to move on from the last month of his life, he has only one wish.

“I’d like to meet with Tonya and David, and just talk with them for a few minutes — a cup of coffee, or lunch or something, just to talk with them and get closure on it all. I never thought that anything would affect me this much in my life. We were all emotional at one point or another. I cried for the first time in years, being a part of this,” he said.

“I just hope she’s able to get her life back,” Butch said. “She deserves to have her children back. She’ll never be able to make up for the time that’s been taken away from her. I just hope that this whole thing makes people take notice of child abuse, and that is something that gets looked at closer from now on. Children are the greatest thing in the world, and they should never be abused or ever be led to believe that they were.”