Teacher's "blow-by-blow" testimony pays offAny other result would have been hard for her to swallow

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/local/14185772.htm

Ex-teacher acquitted in student sex case
By BILL TEETER and DOMINGO RAMIREZ JR.
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITERS

FORT WORTH -- After deliberating less than three hours, a Tarrant County jury found former Southlake elementary teacher Michelle Dawn Sewell not guilty Friday of charges of indecency and sexual assault of a 16-year-old family friend last March.

"For Michelle Dawn Sewell at long last it's over," defense attorney Bob Hinton said. "It's a tribute to our system. It's been a long year for Michelle, so now it's time for her to get on with her life."

Prosecutor Steven Jumes declined to speculate why the jury was swayed toward the defense.

"I felt confident with the case that we presented," Jumes said. "I think we presented enough to render a jury decision of guilty."

Sewell, 28, had faced up to 20 years in prison on each of three counts of indecency with a child by contact and one count of sexual assault. She quivered and cried as she leaned into her attorney's shoulder in the moments before the verdict was read.

When it became clear that she was acquitted on all charges, squeals of jubilation could be heard from her supporters. The boy and his relatives and friends sat stoically on the other side of the courtroom.

Sewell was accused of kissing and caressing the teen at her Grapevine apartment March 4, 2005, and then performing sex acts on him there two days later.

In closing arguments Friday afternoon in a packed courtroom, prosecutor Jumes said that no one would label Sewell a child molester, a felon or a criminal just by looking at her.

"To know Michelle Sewell is to like her," Jumes said. "But it was painfully clear that she couldn't be trusted."

"Why would he make this up?" Jumes asked jurors. "The defense has given you no explanation."

Hinton argued that Sewell and the teen had only a brother-sister relationship and that nothing happened between the two.

"He made an advance, and she said no," Hinton said referring to the night of March 4, 2005. "He said 'I have feelings for you,' and she said she didn't feel the same way. He asked her to kiss him to see if she had any feelings toward him. She did, but it was a quick kiss and she told him she didn't feel anything for him."

Hinton said that nothing happened at her apartment on the night of March 6, 2005.

Sewell met the Carroll student a few years ago when she taught his sister at Durham Elementary School in Southlake.

Sewell befriended the family, baby-sitting the teen and his sister for years and accompanied the family to church and on ski trips. During her trial, she testified that she also had been a baby sitter for about 50 other families in Southlake.

School officials and police began an investigation last March when one of Sewell's friends told another Durham teacher that Sewell had a relationship with the 16-year-old, including that the two had kissed. The boy is now 17 and a junior at Carroll Senior High School.

Sewell quit her teaching job shortly after her arrest in March 2005 and had been free on $10,000 bail.

Her teaching certificate has been inactive since April 30, according to the State Board of Certification's professional discipline unit.

The eight women and four men on the jury deliberated for two hours and 45 minutes before notifying the court just before 6 p.m. that they had a reached a verdict. Judge Scott Wisch, who on Thursday had cautioned the two hostile groups of supporters to behave, ordered them to maintain a calm demeanor after the verdict. Once the trial was over, Wisch asked bailiffs to escort the boy's supporters from the courtroom first, to minimize the possibility of confrontation.

Jurors declined to comment before leaving the courthouse.