Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 28, 1995 TAG: 9504280053
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
It was the second consecutive jury acquittal this week in cases involving charges of sexual abuse or rape. Tuesday night, another Montgomery County jury acquitted a man charged with 18 counts of sexually abusing his stepdaughter during a two-year period. Dutton Olinger was defense attorney in both cases.
Joey D. Gravley, 28, testified Wednesday that he and the teen-age girl had consensual sex after he called her to his Blacksburg apartment in October 1993. He said he had called the girl to come over because he was upset that she had insinuated that his wife thought they already had slept together.
Gravley, at times crying and meek, at other times almost bragging, described how he could tell the girl wanted to have sex with him because she was "eyeballing" him while he stood shirtless in his bedroom.
"I lift logs every day and I work hard. She was staring me down. I don't know, it was a weak moment."
Gravley testified that his only crime was in committing adultery against his wife, whom he had loved since the eighth grade. "I made a mistake and God, for two years, I've been paying for that mistake," Gravley testified.
The girl had told the jury she went to the apartment because Gravley called and asked her to baby-sit. When she arrived, neither his wife nor his son were there, she testified.
The girl testified that the man wouldn't let her leave, threatened her and then raped and sodomized her.
Gravley said he had fallen victim to the girl's obvious lust for him.
Blacksburg Detective Lt. Gary Teaster had testified that when Gravley was told of the allegations against him, he denied seeing the girl that day.
Peggy Frank, an assistant Montgomery County commonwealth's attorney, said the nine-woman, three-man jury must have had some reasonable doubt about the girl's testimony.
Minutes before returning with the verdict, Frank said, the jury had asked for a transcript of part of the girl's testimony. Such requests are not allowed by law.
"They couldn't have believed him [Gravley]. They absolutely could not have," Frank said. "They must not have believed all of her story."
While losing the case was frustrating, "I can't go questioning the jury," Frank said.
by CNB