Jury acquits man accused of criminal sexual conduct
By TIM GULLA Ledger Staff Writer tim@gaffneyledger.com

Tears welled in the corners of his eyes as Joseph Scott Cash embraced his attorney and family members Thursday afternoon in Cherokee County General Sessions Court.

For almost a year, Cash was an accused child molester facing the likelihood of a lengthy stay in prison if convicted and a lifetime with a sex offender label.

Following almost two hours of deliberations on Thursday, however, Cash was a free man. A jury of seven men and five women acquitted him of all charges.

Cash, who most recently lived in Kerville, Texas, was accused of having inappropriate contact with two young girls from 1999 to 2003 in Blacksburg and in Gaffney, where the two girls once lived. He was facing four counts of criminal sexual conduct and four counts of committing lewd acts on a minor.

One of the girls was just 6 years old when the alleged abuse started, while the other girl was just 8. Abuse allegations didn't arise until last year, however, after the two girls were no longer in a position of having close contact with him.

Now 15 and 17 years old, respectively, both testified Wednesday afternoon about frequent instances of inappropriate contact with Cash from 1999 to 2003. One of the teens recalled incidents happening as many as four or five times a week, which prosecutors claimed could have amounted to hundreds of instances of abuse over the time period in question.

When asked a delicate question about human anatomy, one of the teens responded with a question of her own. "If you draw me a picture of it, I can tell you," she said in court.

Prosecutors labeled the teens' experiences with Cash as a matter of "shattered innocence."

Chief Public Defender Don Thompson, meanwhile, labeled much of the teens' stories as simply unbelievable.

"If you believe (the teens') testimony is credible, you convict him," Thompson challenged the jury while pointing at Cash. "I'm not standing here condoning child molestation."

Cash did not testify in his own defense.

Besides the teens, prosecutors put three expert witnesses on the stand, among them two social workers who interviewed and worked with the teens, and a medical doctor who examined them.

With events occurring so long ago, and no physical evidence, Thompson argued the case boiled down to the believability of the teens' stories. "There's only three people on the face of the earth that know the truth of the matter," he said.

Thompson directed the jury multiple times to the teens' claims that some of the abuse occurred while other people were in the same room at the time it occurred, and sometimes when other people were just a few feet away.

One teen alleged, for instance, that Cash would hide what he was doing to her by covering them with a blanket. The other teen described an event in which she allegedly was touched inappropriately while another person was working on a computer with her back turned to them.

No one else ever said or saw anything, Thompson argued to the jury.

"When you put it up against the scales of common sense," he said after the trial, "it just didn't make any sense."

Prosecutors claimed the teens had no motive to make up such stories.

"If I'm going to lie about something, is that what I'm going to come up with," Assistant Solicitor Tony Liebert asked the jury.

Cash was taken back to the jail following the trial, but only so he could pick up his belongings.

Circuit Judge James Lockemy presided over the case.