A week before he was scheduled to stand trial for a second time, a 42-year-old Sherwood man agreed Tuesday to register as a sex offender and pay a $1,000 fine for molesting an 11-year-old friend of his daughter.
In exchange for Joel Carter West accepting that punishment and spending a year on probation, prosecutors reduced the sexual-assault charge against the married father of four from a second-degree felony to a fourth-degree misdemeanor. The felony count carried a 20-year maximum sentence.
The former teacher pleaded no contest before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza. West was represented in the three-minute court appearance by attorney Erin Cassinelli, who negotiated the arrangement with deputy prosecutor Jeanna Sherrill.
His August trial ended in mistrial with a hung jury.
At trial, most jurors favored a guilty verdict, but the 12 members could not reach a unanimous decision over the accusations that West had groped the girl, now 13, while she was at his house for an April 2012 sleepover with his daughter, a softball teammate.
West did not testify, but had told Sherwood police he might have accidentally touched the girl inappropriately during horseplay.
The victim told jurors that West’s relentless tickling started out funny, turned uncomfortable and became groping as he put his hand into her pants.
She said they had been alone together on a golf cart after she got tired of playing an outdoor game devised by the West family called Mantracker in which the children look for cloth-wrapped golf balls thrown onto a nearby golf course in the dark.
The victim said she was upset about West groping her and told his daughter about what happened, but still spent the night at the West home and did not tell her parents about the assault for three months. The groping later came to light when she told an adult friend what had happened.
West’s daughter testified the girl never told her anything about being touched by West. The daughter told jurors the girl had a tendency for exaggeration and drama. She also said the girl wasn’t alone with West that night.
West’s oldest son also disputed that the girl had ever been alone with his father as she claimed and testified she appeared happy that night, saying he never saw her upset.
Both children said their father liked to poke and tickle them and their siblings. West had been a civics and physical education teacher at Little Rock Catholic High School but was fired after being arrested in September 2012.
Jurors also heard testimony from a former student who had accused West in 2000 of sexually harassing her while she was a 12-year old sixth-grader in Hot Springs.
Arkansas, Pages 10 on 03/12/2014