Judge finds Latta not guilty

Latta was placed on administrative leave immediately following a meeting with Guntersville City Schools superintendent Dr. Jason Barnett and then interim GHS principal Darren James the following day, Oct. 1, 2021, leading to his eventual resignation. During the hearing, Latta tearfully testified he resigned "because I didn't want to be where I wasn't wanted." The former teacher and coach is now employed by UAB, though not as an educator, and lives in Blount County.

After Latta was placed on administrative leave, the Guntersville City Schools Board of Education, as well as the Alabama State Board of Education, led separate investigations into the incident. Both entities concluded their investigations, clearing Latta’s teaching certificate. He is free to teach anywhere in the state.

On Jan. 27, 2022, according to testimony, the victim and her father filed a formal complaint with the City of Guntersville against Latta.

City prosecutor Kelsey Yoste tried the case with James Berry of Berry and King, LLC representing the defendant. The victim was the first to take the witness stand, recounting her version of events from last Sept. 30.

According to her own testimony, the student was a junior at the time, playing varsity volleyball for Coach Latta for the second year in a row. On the day in question, the team was practicing before playing two games that evening. The victim stopped practicing early, lying face down on the ground near a bench due to a headache. It was then she claimed she felt something ramming between her legs. She thought it was a teammate playing a joke, but when she turned around to look, she saw it was Latta, pushing the cart into her groin region again and again. She testified he didn’t say anything, but smiled instead, adding to her discomfort. He walked away from her after she told him to stop and pushed the cart away. After a certain amount of time, when the victim was sitting up, she said he began rolling volleyballs directly at her, instead of toward the ball cart, as usual.

She testified she went into the locker room, upset and crying, and called her parents. She said several people noticed she was crying, including Mr. James, who was at the school for the games. He testified that he remembered seeing her upset that day and had asked her if she was okay. When her parents arrived to watch the games, she told them something had happened, although not in full detail. She played both games, but continued to feel uncomfortable and “wouldn’t get into position because he was standing facing me.”

According to her testimony, it was only after both games, while out to eat with her family, that she finally told them the details of what happened. The next day at school, the student was called to the counselor’s office and ended up relaying the entire altercation to her, former principal Roseanne Mabry, Mr. James and Dr. Barnett. Other than an interview with the Child Advocacy Center, the victim said she was never interviewed by another investigator.

After her testimony, Yoste played a video of the school’s security footage from the gym that day for Judge Mitchell. The video was shown at several different angles and showed only part of the victim’s body, mostly her elbow as she was lying on the floor. The ball cart was also partially seen. The video also showed the girl’s hand forcefully shoving the cart away from her. Latta was shown in the video handling the cart and also rolling the balls in her direction.

On cross examination, Berry asked the complainant if she had considered that Latta was simply trying to get her up and involved in practice again, to which she answered, “no.” He also asked her if she told Latta, or any other adult at the school that day, that he had made her feel uncomfortable, to which she also replied, “no.”

Yoste then called Mr. James and Dr. Barnett to the stand, both of whom separately testified about the meetings they had with the student and the coach on Oct. 1. They each mentioned that during his meeting, Latta was not told what the allegation was, nor who made it, although he did (correctly) guess who it was.

Later, In his own testimony, Latta claimed he never heard what the allegation was, but also that his assistant coach at the time, Brittany Case, told him after both games were over on the night of Sept. 30, that one of his players had been heard going around saying some things to the other players that might implicate him in some wrongdoing.

However, both James and Barnett testified Latta was adamant during the meeting that he had done nothing wrong, had not been within 20 feet of her, and that they needed to pull the video footage to exonerate him. During his testimony, on cross examination, Latta told Yoste that both men were lying about being within 20 feet of her, as he would “never have said that,” since his duties as a coach would have permitted that amount of space between him and his players at any given time.

James testified, though, that during the Oct. 1 meeting, Latta said “more than once that he wasn’t even close to her” and that he insinuated the video footage would present in his favor. During his testimony, James said after watching the video, he believed it supported the victim and her version of events. Dr. Barnett said the same, but when pushed during Berry’s cross examination, he admitted it had been nearly a year since he saw the footage and that the video does not actually show the defendant touching the student at any time.

Berry asked for a motion to acquit after the prosecution rested, which the judge took under advisement and ultimately denied. Latta took the stand then, the only witness for the defense. He talked about the nearly 17 years he taught and coached at GHS and mentioned the complainant was a very good volleyball player who “never came off the court during games” and without whom “the team would struggle.” He said he had previously had a good relationship with her and her entire family, which the victim also mentioned in her earlier testimony. He said he remembered speaking to her father in between the two games played that night, with her mother sitting next to him, and nothing was said then about the allegations.

On the day of the incident, he said she told him she had a headache and walked off the court to rest. He said he did push the volleyball cart off the court while she was laying down, but never struck anyone with it. He claimed, after requesting to watch the video again, he was trying to get her to come back to the court with her team, to “get her out of her funk” by possibly popping a wheelie with the ball cart and rolling the balls toward her to get her re-engaged.

He testified that during the meeting with administration the following day, he was never asked to tell his side of the story, nor was he made aware of the allegations against him. He was told after being put on administrative leave that he was to have no contact with any students or parents, to which he fully complied. He testified that he was never offered the opportunity to see the video footage, not until his attorney was able to show it to him months later. Once he did, he said he never saw any touching with the cart on the video.

Yoste’s cross examination of Latta was hours of back-and-forth questioning, much of it from Judge Mitchell himself. Although Latta remembered some specific instances from Sept. 30, like who he talked to and details from the games, he could not remember much, if anything, from the incident. He did agree the arm seen on the video was the victim’s.

During closing arguments, Berry told the court the City did not mention one word about intent, which is necessary in a harassment charge. He brought up Latta’s clean record of teaching and coaching for the last 22 years, as well as that there was no physical touching seen in the security footage from that day.

Yoste said that nothing shown in the video contradicted what her client said, and, in fact, her testimony supplemented what was physically missing from view. She said her testimony was credible and has never changed and there is no evidence she has been untruthful. She said Latta’s testimony, by contrast, was “unbelievable” and he contradicted himself more than once on the stand, or simply couldn’t remember the events of the day, ergo, his testimony “should not be considered truthful.”

Just after 4 p.m., Judge Mitchell told the court he did not have enough evidence to convict and returned a not guilty verdict, though he said it was possible Latta “exercised bad judgment,” which is not part of the criminal code concerning harassment. He spoke directly to the victim, telling her she was “represented by a really good prosecutor who did an exceptional job of presenting the case, but intent is hard to prove” and acknowledged to the gallery that some might not agree with his ruling or understand it.

Both Latta and the victim were emotional when the verdict was read. Berry made a statement afterward saying they were “very happy with the outcome.”

Yoste said she is “very proud” of her client for testifying in court, even though her story “was not enough for a conviction today.”

Yoste said she was “very proud” of the young woman for testifying in court, though, “unfortunately her story was not enough for a conviction today.”