Case declared a mistrial

0
298

GREENFIELD — The hours ticked by without any decision.

A jury of 12 Hancock County residents told a judge Thursday night they could not decide whether 55-year-old Terrell Gibson of Greenfield was guilty of the 10 sexual-assault related felonies prosecutors filed against him.

After more than five hours of deliberating, the jury told Hancock Circuit Court Judge Scott Sirk they’d reached an impasse. More time debating the matter, they said, wasn’t going to help them reach a consensus.

So, Sirk declared a mistrial.

Now, a new jury will be selected to hear the evidence. A new trial date has been set for Oct. 30 — days before the case will turn exactly three years old.

Gibson was charged in November 2015 after a girl came forward accusing him of touching her inappropriately and forcing her to engage in sex acts.

Prosecutors spent the three-day trial working to convince the jury that Gibson was guilty. They put the young victim on the stand to tell her story and pointed to romantic-sounding text messages the man sent the girl as evidence of an inappropriate relationship.

And at the same time, Bob Elsea, Gibson’s defense attorney, did his best to cast doubt in the jurors’ minds, telling them the girl was mentally ill, manipulative and a liar.

The girl told the jury this week that the abuse happened repeatedly between 2012 and 2014 whenever she visited Gibson’s home in Greenfield.

The girl told the jury about several instances when Gibson groped her, forced her to touch him inappropriately or engage in sexual acts. The man also sent her inappropriate pictures of himself and other text messages that were of a sexual nature, she testified.

The abuse happened in different areas of Gibson’s home, usually when his wife wasn’t looking or was in another room, she testified.

Gibson denies the allegations, and his attorney told the jury the accuser’s story has changed several times over the course of the investigation — evidence, he said, that she can’t be trusted.

The girl confided in two friends before ever making a disclosure to an adult about the abuse, according to testimony.

Elsea said each time tale she told was slightly different, but it got her the attention she seemed to crave.

But the victim had nothing to gain from lying, said Hancock County Deputy Prosecutor Cathy Wilson, who presented the state’s case. She pointed to text messages the defendant sent the victim as evidence that they’d had an inappropriate relationship.

Wilson read aloud one message the girl sent Gibson, which said: “What happened between us wasn’t right and I want it to stop.”

“She has zero motivation to give you anything but the truth,” Wilson said to the jury in her closing argument, while asking the panel to find Gibson guilty.

In the final day of testimony, jurors heard from a psychologist and a licensed clinical social worker, both of whom had reviewed the girl’s medical, therapy and schooling records and disagreed on whether the girl had Reactive Attachment Disorder — a “rare but serious condition in which an infant or young child doesn’t establish healthy attachments with parents or caregivers,” according to the Mayo Clinic.

The psychologist, Dr. Lawrence Lennon, took the stand as part of Gibson’s defense. He told the jury that he’d worked counseling children in a private practice since the 1980s; and although he’d never met the victim, he believed the week he spent reviewing her medical records and watching a video of a deposition she gave ahead of the trial gave him a healthy understanding of her behavior.

The social worker, Katie Creason, took the stand on behalf of the state. She told the jury she’d been seeing the victim for one-on-one counseling sessions for more than two years, during which they regularly discussed the accusations the girl made against Gibson.

Both witnesses told the jury the girl had a difficult childhood.

Testimony earlier in the week revealed the girl’s father died when she was very young and her mother abandoned her a few years later. After living with a friend of her mother’s for several years, she came to live with an aunt, who became her legal guardian.

This constant moving around likely gave the girl the severe sense of insecurity that comes with Reactive Attachment Disorder, Lennon said. Lying in hopes of getting attention was a common trait among those who have the disorder, he said.

But Creason — who is certified to diagnose and prescribe medication for mental illnesses just as a doctor can — said there was no evidence the girl had the disorder. And if she did, Creason said she still had no reason to believe the girl had fabricated the abuse.

Neither prosecutors nor counsel for the defense offered a comment following the mistrial being declared. Gibson remains out of jail on a $25,000 cash bond.