A plea agreement that would have ended the case of a former Stephen Decatur High School music teacher who admitted 33 years ago to having a sexual relationship with one of his students came to a different end last week.
The Worcester County Courthouse in Snow Hill.
File photo
By Stewart Dobson, Editor
A plea agreement that would have ended the case of a former Stephen Decatur High School music teacher who admitted 33 years ago to having a sexual relationship with one of his students came to a different end last week in circuit court in Snow Hill.
The case, which has been working its way through the courts since last fall, was dismissed after a motion by Assistant State’s Attorney Pamela Correa to reduce the charges against Ronald Davis, 64, was denied by Circuit Court Judge Beau Oglesby because of a conflict with the statute of limitations.
Davis, who left Worcester schools for a similar job in Somerset County after confessing to his supervisor late in the 1991-92 school year that he had an inappropriate relationship with a 17-year-old female student, was initially charged with felony child abuse.
In court on last week, Correa told the court Davis was prepared to plead guilty if the state could amend the charges to a misdemeanor violation of the state education law regarding school security and sex offenses.
Oglesby, noting that he had considered that possibility over the weekend, said he could not do for the prosecution and defense what they could not do themselves — lower the charges to a misdemeanor offense without triggering a conflict with the statute of limitations.
“You’re asking me to grant a motion to do something that can’t be done,” the judge said.
Oglesby said the state’s judicial proceedings code makes clear that misdemeanors must be prosecuted within a year of the offense having occurred, while this series of incidents took place more than 30 years ago. That circumstance rendered the motion unworkable, he said.
Although Correa, with the support of defense attorney John Phoebus, countered that the defendant would waive the protections the statute of limitations afforded him, Oglesby said the law was clear on its face and denied the motion.
A subsequent closed-door conference between the prosecution and defense produced no way around that decision, leading the state to dismiss the criminal indictment against Davis.
Phoebus said Tuesday that the state’s attorney’s office has said it intends to recharge Davis and will now have to decide whether to seek a grand jury indictment or to file its own formal charges via what’s known as a “criminal information.”
The circuitous route to the case’s dismissal reflects the indirect route that led it to the circuit court docket this year.
According to the charging documents, consensual sexual activity between the defendant and victim began when the latter was a high school senior and a student of Davis, even though both later admitted knowing it was wrong.
Davis eventually confessed his involvement in an inappropriate relationship to his supervisor, telling then-Vice Principal Lou Taylor, “He couldn’t live with himself” because of it, investigators reported.
Taylor relayed the substance of that conversation up the school system chain of command. Davis then resigned and took a similar job in the Somerset County school system, the charging documents reported.
The student-teacher affair led to victim to three rounds of therapy over the years because of depression and nightmares about Davis, she told investigators, until she realized that consensual or not, the relationship constituted abuse.
The charging documents state that she revealed the situation to an individual in the office of Child and Youth Protection of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, which then alerted the Worcester County Sheriff’s Office. The investigation began last October.
Davis was formally charged with assault and child abuse by a person in a custodial role in November, with the case placed on the circuit court docket in December.
The state’s attorney’s office could not comment on its plans or how it might proceed, because even though the case was dismissed, it is still technically pending.