Posted 6:41 am Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Mineola Swingers’ Club Defendant’s Trial Postponed
EDITOR’S NOTE: It is the policy of the Tyler Morning Telegraph to not identify victims of sexual abuse to protect their identities and encourage reporting of such crimes.
By CASEY KNAUPP
Staff Writer
The trial for Patrick Kelly, a defendant in the Mineola Swingers’ Club case, was postponed for one week at the request of his defense attorneys.
Staff Writer
The trial for Patrick Kelly, a defendant in the Mineola Swingers’ Club case, was postponed for one week at the request of his defense attorneys.
Jury selection in the case was scheduled for Monday but during a pre-trial hearing, 241st District Judge Jack Skeen Jr. granted attorney Thad Davidson’s motion for continuance, resetting the trial for June 30.
Davidson had requested that the case be halted until investigations could be concluded regarding John Cantrell, the Mineola foster father of three of the victims in the Mineola sex case who was arrested last week on a 1990 aggravated sexual assault of a child charge from California. But Skeen said he would not hold off on taking Kelly and the remaining co-defendants to trial pending the investigation because he said he did not know how long it would last.
Davidson said he didn’t know of Cantrell’s arrest Friday morning, when he told the judge he was ready to go to trial in Kelly’s case. He said he filed the motion for continuance Friday evening after he found out of the arrest.
He said if Cantrell is indicted, it would eliminate him as a credible witness in the state’s case against Kelly, also known as “Booger Red.”
Two of Kelly’s co-defendants, Shauntel Mayo and Jamie Pittman, have already gone to trial and in neither of their cases did prosecutors call Cantrell as a witness. His wife, Margie Cantrell, however, did testify in both cases.
Davidson said Mrs. Cantrell could be a party to her husband’s allegations.
He indicated that the Smith County District Attorney’s Office knew of the California arrest reports and other information regarding Cantrell’s allegations and that they didn’t release the information to him along with the rest of the state’s evidence, which was ordered by the judge. Davidson said that since the Wood County DA’s Office had the information, he suspected that the Smith County DA’s Office did too.
Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham said he has never been called by or provided information by the Wood County DA’s Office and he had never been informed of the California allegations. “We have nothing,” he said, adding that he provided Davidson with everything he had.
Bingham said Cantrell would not be called as a witness in the case. He said Mrs. Cantrell would not be able to testify about her husband’s allegations from California because it wouldn’t be admissible in Kelly’s case.
Bingham said if Davidson thought there was exculpatory evidence in Wood County that would help his case, “then give them time to get it.”
Skeen said one week would give Davidson and his co-counsel Tina Brumbelow plenty of opportunity to obtain the police reports and whatever he wanted to obtain from the California authorities. He said the allegations, as he understood them, did not pertain to the victims in the Mineola case.
Skeen set another pre-trial hearing for 3 p.m. on Friday.
Kelly, 41, Tyler is charged with engaging in organized criminal activity and aggravated assault of a child for allegedly forcing two young siblings to have sex with each other in 2004. He faces five years to life in prison for each charge.
The defendant is also charged with tampering with evidence for allegedly destroying evidence in the case, including costumes the children wore when they performed for the audiences and videotapes of the children performing skits and having sex with each other. Kelly faces two to 10 years in prison if convicted of the third-degree felony.
The victims in the Mineola Swingers’ Club case – three siblings who are now a 10-year-old girl, a 9-year-old boy, a 7-year-old girl and their 9-year-old aunt, all have testified that Kelly and his co-defendants taught them beginning at age 5 how to dance and perform sex acts in “kindergarten,” then forced them to dance and have sex with each other in front of an audience at the Mineola Swingers’ Club. The defendants collected money for the performances but only paid the children with food. The children were also given “silly pills,” or drugs, before they danced in the club.
In November 2004, Child Protective Services began investigating allegations of neglect and drug abuse. What they discovered, after the children were removed from the home in March 2005, were children suffering ongoing sexual abuse and exploitation.
Defendants in the Mineola Swinger’s Club case who are awaiting trial include Ms. Mayo, Jamie Pittman, Dennis Boyd Pittman, Rebecca Pittman, Shelia Darlene Sones, and Jimmy Dale Sones.
