Susan Lemery hugs her husband, Dan, after she was found guilty of five of six charges against her.
Paul Kitagaki Jr. / Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Posted on 06/23/2002 2:59:46 PM PDT by ValerieUSA
EVERETT -- Susan Lemery cupped her face in her hands and wept yesterday as a court clerk read the jury's verdict: The second-grade teacher was guilty of fondling and raping a 14-year-old boy.
She turned to her husband, Dan Lemery, a Boeing Co. engineer, hugged him and cried briefly in his arms before corrections officers led her to jail.
"Susan has maintained her innocence all along, and she still does," defense attorney David Allen said later.
The jury of six men and six women deliberated for more than 23 hours over a span of four days before finding Lemery, 38, guilty of three counts of child rape in the third degree and two counts of third-degree child molestation.
The jurors deadlocked 11-1 in favor of guilt on a molestation charge that involved a second 14-year-old boy. That count was dismissed.
Lemery will face five years in prison -- the state's mandatory penalty for child rape and molestation -- when she is sentenced July 3, Snohomish County Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Jim Townsend said.
Allen promised an appeal on several grounds, including a contention that a police search of Lemery's computer hard drive was overly broad. Lemery's teaching license will be revoked if the convictions stand up on appeal.
After they sifted through three weeks of often conflicting testimony, including Lemery's personal denials, jurors said they were convinced of her guilt by a collection of details that corroborated one accuser's stories and not hers.
Those details included automated-teller-machine receipts and Boeing timecards that showed that Dan Lemery's absences from the home matched the boy's stories, but not his wife's, juror Sheldon O'dahl said.
They also included the DNA evidence, taken from a stain on Lemery's bedcover, that two expert witnesses said was likely a mixture of Lemery's and the boy's bodily fluids, juror Melissa Malind said.
Then there was the totality of the picture that the evidence painted of Lemery's behavior during the 2000-2001 school year, Malind said, that convinced jurors that she had crossed the social and sexual boundaries between teenagers and adults.
Witnesses testified that Lemery frequently filled her family's Marysville house with the 14-year-old friends of her oldest son, boys and girls, on one occasion going so far as to buy them a supply of over-the-counter drugs for an "energy pill" party.
One 14-year-old boy accused her of picking him up in the parking lot of a Marysville grocery in October 2000, where he was hanging out drunk and stoned, and fondling him when they got to her home.
Another boy said Lemery fondled him on a couch on two separate nights, then had intercourse with him on three other occasions in April 2001 at various places in her home.
The jury spent most of its time wrestling with the first boy's story, O'dahl said. Most of the jury believed the boy, but a lone holdout found that she could not trust his memory because he admitted to being drunk and under the influence of marijuana at the time.
Deliberations on the remaining five counts, all of which related to the second boy, went much more quickly, O'dahl said.
Under Washington law, child rape and molestation is charged in the third degree when the victim is 14 or 15 years old and the older party is at least four years older.
Lemery has been on administrative leave with pay from her second-grade teaching job at Olivia Park Elementary School in South Everett since the charges were filed in June 2001.
Her employer, the Mukilteo School District, will not make a formal decision to terminate her until supervisors can consult with lawyers, spokesman Andy Muntz said.
"But due to the nature of this conviction, we anticipate that she is no longer going to be teaching in the Mukilteo School District," Muntz said. "The law is pretty cut and dried on this kind of issue."
What IS it with these guys? Are they such pathetic, immasculated husks that they have NO pride? I can't believe that they continue to support women that kill and rape children--even their own--and have so little pride they don't care how they look in the public eye.
"Ummmm...Let's see if we can just put this all behind us and get her back into her classroom. This is a minor miscalculation on her part. What we need in this country is a little more "tolerance" for pedophiles, that's all. I'm sure if we all vote Democrat we can get that legislation passed quite easily." (/s)
14 year old boys aren't raped by women.
At least if that's the case, I spent a great deal of time trying to get raped at 14. And she'd have done the job...
Don't be naive.
Sending this woman to jail is pretty pointless. Firing her from teaching ever again, is another matter..
Perhaps he has faith in his wife, and disagrees with the jury?
Woman is a pedophiles, she is a kind and caring person who only loves her victims. BS. I hope she rots in jail for a veryb long time. Maybe her new "girld friends" will teach her a thing or two about predatory rape.
I'm not naive; it's just that you, like all Libertines here on FR, wouldn't know moral turpitude if it...aw, let's face it, moral turpitude is your bestest buddy.
The trial is over; the chance that this woman is actually innocent is vanishingly small. You weren't in the jury room, so you have no idea as to the facts of the case.
Twelve people looked over the evidence, and argued about it incessantly. You had one who couldn't convict on one count because a witness wasn't trustworthy in her opinion. What does that say about the rest of the evidence.
I'm going to assume she's guilty, and that this guy has been her patsy--maybe worse than that for all we know--this whole time.
It's disgusting, and an insult to good men and women everywhere.
(P.S. If I have to read one more Rusty Yates "I wish I could just hold Andrea in my arms" interview I'm gonna hurl...)
LOL - if she gets sprung on a technicality, she can teach?
Me too. I had to wait until I was 15 years, 6 months, and 16 days.
However, the female who committed the act was about my age.
If the teacher had sex with a 7 year old, would you jail her? 1 year old? What's the limit?
Whether or not he cheated is no excuse for her predatory behavior of seducing drunken friends of her own kids. What a wife! What a mom! What a teacher! What a friend! What a citizen! She does belong in jail.
I believe that in this particular court case, the court was referring to "statutory" rape as opposed to "forcible" rape when the court charged the female teacher with the rape of a 14-year-old boy. It seems to me that it would be rather difficult for a woman to force a boy, or even a man, to have sex with her against their will.
A year's leave with pay, and they still can't decide whether to terminate her? That is pretty cushy. I guess it doesn't matter that this whole thing is being done with taxpayer dollars -- trial, prison, salary continuation, etc. All so she can drug and diddle a minor! Outrageous!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.