By James Pruitt
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
Despite seeing all the misdemeanor charges against Bryan School officials dismissed, Sheriff Steve Towns is optimistic case will proceed.
The case circles around the failure of school officials to properly report an incident involving a teacher showing adult sex toys to underage female students a few years ago.
Judge Kent I. North granted a motion by special prosecutor Hunter Brown to dismiss all misdemeanor charges against Bryan Superintendent Diana Savage and members of the Board of Education Sept. 20. A Jobs and Family Services employee still faces a pre-trial Oct. 4.
Felony charges previously brought against the parties were dismissed in August, but the prosecutor reserved the right to bring them back at a later date if evidence supports them.
Since then a different special prosecutor has been appointed in that case and he has brought with him an investigator. This turn of events has pleased Sheriff Towns.
“What we wanted to do from the get-go was to present our case as a whole to the grand jury,” Town said. “What happened with the misdemeanor situation is we didn’t give that prosecutor all of our evidence because if I give it to that prosecutor I can’t give it to the grand jury.”
The goal is to present all the evidence together in one shot, not in a bunch of pieces.
“We’re right now where we wanted to be a year ago,” Towns said. “We asked for a special prosecutor, we finally got one.”
The dismissed misdemeanors could be reinstated in the future with more evidence, Towns said. That means he will finally be able to present all his evidence together and go from there.
“That’s the key to everything,” Towns said. “Present everything together and let the grand jury decide and when the grand jury is done we will decide what to do after that.”
Now with a special prosecutor, the sheriff will be able to secure subpoenas to do further investigations and complete the process.
“So we feel it’s a good case or else we wouldn’t have gotten this far,” Towns said. “It’s one of the numerous hurdles we’ve had to get over to get where we’re at.
“We’re confident we are going to get where we need to go.”
James Pruitt may be reached at
publisher@thevillagereporter.com