FL- Former Skynyrd drummer acquitted

See earlier story: Guess jury decide that "The law is an ass" due to fact complications that simply were never allowed for in the laws.

8-29-2009 Florida:

Former Lynyrd Skynyrd drummer Artimus Pyle was acquitted Friday of failing to register as a sex offender and lying on a driver’s license application.

Jurors deliberated four hours after a five-day trial before delivering their verdict, ending the 61-year-old rocker’s latest legal ordeal.

Pyle hugged and kissed his lawyers and numerous friends and family who showed up to support him.

“I feel very blessed,” he said. “I was in the hands of six people that really paid attention.”

He said waiting for the verdict was in some ways more stressful than the aftermath of the 1977 plane crash that killed three band members, the road manager and two pilots.

“I have never felt a feeling in my life like the feeling of waiting for that verdict,” he said. “It’s a feeling so deep inside you. It’s so hollow, and you feel so helpless.”

Pyle said the acquittal now frees him up to ask the governor to set aside his 1993 guilty pleas to attempted capital sexual battery and lewd assault charges on two young girls in Jacksonville Beach. He will have plenty of supporters in that effort, including one of the girls, his now-20-year-old daughter Kelly, who said Friday she believes the crime never happened.

Kelly Pyle was in court for much of the trial to support her father, who she didn’t meet until she was 18. She said she has never believed her father sexually assaulted her or any other child.

“If those charges were true, I wouldn’t be here supporting my dad,” she said. “I love him, and I know that he is a good person.”

She said he pleaded guilty because the state offered him probation and he was facing a potential of 25 years to life in prison.

In closing arguments Thursday, Assistant State Attorney Kelly Wark confessed a love for Lynyrd Skynyrd’s music but urged jurors not to be swayed by “sympathy or sadness at the tainting of an American legend.”

She said the law is clear that he should have registered as a sex offender because he worked and stayed in Florida. After he was arrested for that she said he failed to provide a correct address, resulting in a second arrest a week later. Wark said he clearly violated the law by swearing to Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles workers that his old St. Johns County address was still correct.

“He is not above the law,” she said. “He made choice after choice after choice with the assistance of everyone who loves him to violate the rules.”

Wark said Pyle had no problem following the rules during his eight-year probation sentence.

But defense attorney Craig Williams insisted Pyle no longer lived in Florida and therefore wasn’t required to register in the state. The only reason he came to Florida in November 2007 was to reinstate his driver’s license after a series of mistakes by the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Department of Revenue, Williams said.

He called the circumstances of Pyle’s arrest a “paperwork nightmare” and “mountain of calamity.”

He said St. Johns deputies never consulted the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Internet site, which would have shown Pyle with a North Carolina address. They lost a document showing Pyle notified the department when he moved from Crescent Beach in 2002, only to find it again two months ago, Williams said. And they ignored repeated phone calls from Williams’ office the week of Pyle’s arrest that he said could have resolved the matter.

If Pyle had resided at his old Florida address, Williams argued, he would have lived there free of charge without the knowledge of the family living there now for five years. He noted that when he learned St. Johns deputies were looking for him in 2007, he immediately called one of them, got in his car and drove to Florida the next day.

“Mr. Pyle doesn’t think he’s above the rules. In fact, Mr. Pyle did everything in his power to comply with the rules,” Williams said. “When people explained to him what he was required to do, he did it.” ..Source.. by Paul Pinkham