A 50-year-old Pine Bluff man accused of molesting a neighbor's 4-year-old daughter who had developed an "almost obsessive" fixation on him was acquitted at trial of sexual-assault charges on Wednesday.
With no physical evidence of assault and no witnesses who had seen him abuse the girl, defense attorney Justin Cloar called the case against Lesley Eldon Dearing "weak."
"Here, in the United States of America, we err on the side of caution," he said in arguing against a conviction. "The evidence is very thin in this case."
Pulaski County jurors deliberated for 38 minutes before finding Dearing innocent of second-degree sexual assault. The charge is a Class B felony that carries up to 20 years in prison.
Jurors in Circuit Judge Herb Wright's courtroom were not told that the girl, now 8, could not testify because she did not remember what had happened in 2013. Her parents were allowed to disclose some things she had told them under a hearsay exemption allowed in cases involving child victims who are not able to testify.
Jurors also heard testimony from a young woman who said Dearing had raped and molested her as a child. Those allegations were resolved when Dearing pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor battery charge, Cloar said.
The defense did not call any witnesses or present any evidence. Dearing, who has a criminal history that dates back to 1984, did not testify, which prevented prosecutors from divulging his 20 felony convictions at trial.
Court records show that those convictions include aggravated assault, false imprisonment, theft, burglary and drug possession.
The girl's parents accused Dearing in June 2013 after she began acting out sexually, including taking off her clothes at day care and inappropriate behavior with boys court records show.
The couple, since divorced, came to believe that Dearing had been molesting the girl the first time she was caught acting out naked with the family dog, records say.
Prosecutors said the girl, confronted by her parents, said "It's OK. Les does it."
But Cloar questioned whether the parents really heard that and pointed to their conflicting testimony about how often the girl acted out with the dog, when she did it and the events surrounding that discovery.
The girl has three older sisters. Cloar said any overly sexual behavior the girl might have displayed was probably something she learned from them.
Cloar also argued that the child, seeing how upset her parents were, reacted to their shock by making some reference to Dearing.
Dearing and the child had developed a close friendship after he moved into the same Pulaski County trailer park and had been befriended by her parents, according to testimony.
The girl's mother, 48, described her youngest child's interest in Dearing as "almost obsessive," telling jurors that the man regularly brought her small gifts and trinkets, a practice she did not mind except when he would give her candy and soft drinks.
"She loved him," the child's father said of her affection for Dearing. "We always see the best in everybody."
The 43-year-old man said he thought his daughter's fixation on Dearing was somewhat unusual because she would have temper tantrums when Dearing would leave after visiting the family.
The father also acknowledged he is on parole for convictions that include burning his son's hand. But he denied that he'd actually done that.
He told jurors that he only pleaded guilty and accepted an eight-year prison sentence because such a plea would resolve the case against him and let him reunite sooner with his wife and son.
The girl's 18-year-old sister told jurors the child called Dearing "her best friend," and that she regularly allowed the girl to go off with Dearing when she was baby-sitting that summer as a 14-year-old.
With testimony that some of the girl's behavior manifested as the bottom-shaking dance style known as twerking, the 18-year-old was asked whether she'd ever danced like that in front of her little sister.
The woman said she would never have danced like that when she was 14.
"Twerking? I knew what it was, but I did not do it," the woman told Cloar.
Metro on 03/17/2017