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Jury: Teacher guilty of physical abuse
The trial started out with five counts. The most serious one was actually going to be tried in a separate trial, but it was thrown out on day one. That was the one where she was accused of pushing a boy's face into his desk hard enough to chip two teeth.
Of the remaining four counts, two were thrown out this morning by the judge.
The jury deliberated for a little more than two hours this evening, and came back an aquittal for one count and a conviction on the other. Kathleen Garrett will be doing jail time, but no more than five years. I would guess she will do substantially less than that. It all comes down to physical evidence (or a complete lack thereof), and that pretty much sucks. On the one hand, I am happy to see the justice system work properly and force prosecutors to do their jobs. On the other hand, as the parent of an autistic child I really wanted to see this woman do hard time and become some prison dyke's bitch. So obviously, I would have been a poor choice as a juror.
Honestly, I care less about this one woman and more about the school system that allowed this to happen. As I understand it, she had been receiving complaints for years and the problems were either ignored or minimized. At one point she was named Teacher of the Year for the state of Florida, but that was thirteen years ago. I think she just got burned out. Twenty six years doing a very hard job, and it just piled up on her. She probably honestly thinks she was still doing a good job. But she wasn't. And the school should have held her accountable long before it became a criminal matter.
Here's hoping the school district has learned from this, and made the necessary changes.
The trial started out with five counts. The most serious one was actually going to be tried in a separate trial, but it was thrown out on day one. That was the one where she was accused of pushing a boy's face into his desk hard enough to chip two teeth.
Of the remaining four counts, two were thrown out this morning by the judge.
The jury deliberated for a little more than two hours this evening, and came back an aquittal for one count and a conviction on the other. Kathleen Garrett will be doing jail time, but no more than five years. I would guess she will do substantially less than that. It all comes down to physical evidence (or a complete lack thereof), and that pretty much sucks. On the one hand, I am happy to see the justice system work properly and force prosecutors to do their jobs. On the other hand, as the parent of an autistic child I really wanted to see this woman do hard time and become some prison dyke's bitch. So obviously, I would have been a poor choice as a juror.
Honestly, I care less about this one woman and more about the school system that allowed this to happen. As I understand it, she had been receiving complaints for years and the problems were either ignored or minimized. At one point she was named Teacher of the Year for the state of Florida, but that was thirteen years ago. I think she just got burned out. Twenty six years doing a very hard job, and it just piled up on her. She probably honestly thinks she was still doing a good job. But she wasn't. And the school should have held her accountable long before it became a criminal matter.
Here's hoping the school district has learned from this, and made the necessary changes.
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