According to the civil and criminal jury docket, commencing at 9 a.m. Monday, a number of jury trials are expected to begin. Just how many trials will actually be heard is not yet known, according to an employee with the prosecutor's office.
But among those expected to start is the trial of an Arkansas man accused of assaulting a woman with a dangerous weapon.
Steve Amato of Magazine, Ark., was charged in 2006 with the assault after an incident between Amato and a Sequoyah County woman, who was at the time living with Amato's brother-in-law, court records indicate.
According to court records, the alleged victim told a Sequoyah County Sheriff's deputy after the incident that she saw Amato outside her house and told him to leave because they did not get along. She then went back into the bedroom.
She told police that she then heard someone come into the house, and when she walked back out of the bedroom she found Amato in the kitchen.
The victim alleged that Amato began cursing at her and came at her and shoved her. In self-defense, the woman told authorities that she grabbed a wooden club and began hitting Amato in the arm. At that time, she said he hit her in the face with a drinking glass and got on top of her and began hitting her, according to court records.
Amato alleged to police that the alleged victim started screaming at him when he went inside to get a glass of tea. Amato alleges that once she began hitting him with a wooden club, he threw the glass at her, hitting her in the face with the glass, which cut her.
But the alleged victim has since publicly disputed Amato's claims. The woman told Your TIMES last year that she has had multiple surgeries on her face since the assault, which resulted in an extensive scar down her face, as well as nerve damage.
The sex crime cases include a 2004 case against Kenneth Ray Mitchell, 41, of Muldrow, and the 2005 case of Terry Gene Williams, 25, of Gore. Mitchell is facing charges of sexual battery and two counts of stalking. Williams is accused of four counts of first-degree rape and two counts of lewd molestation in connection with the alleged sexual assault of two young boys.
Williams was bound over for trial after his Jan. 31, 2006, preliminary hearing, in which two victims in the case both testified.
The charges against Williams stem from a September 2005 incident. According to court records, Gore police was called to a Gore home in reference to the abuse on Sept. 15.
The victims' mother told police that she walked into the bedroom of her two youngest sons, who were 8 and 9 years old at the time, to find her 15-year-old stepson in bed under the covers with her 9-year-old son, according to court records.
The next day, the victims' mother asked the boys what had been going on when she went into their room. The boys allegedly told her that their step-brother and Williams had been "messing with them."
During interviews with the juveniles, the boys described what Williams did to them. The boys told police that the alleged sexual abuse took place at their Gore home and at Webbers Falls Lock and Dam No. 16.
Other felony cases, which are on the docket to begin Wednesday and Thursday, include the 2001 case of Wayne Morrison of Roland, the 2004 case of Michael Wayne Turner, 40, of Muldrow, and the 2007 case of Roger William Brooks.
Morrison was charged in November 2001 with five counts of sexual abuse of a minor child. Turner faces one count of second-degree rape and one count of sodomy. Brooks, 34, of Sallisaw faces second-degree burglary and malicious injury to property in connection with a botched bond enforcement operation based on mistaken identity.
According to the docket, the last sex crime case to be heard next week is the trial of Dennis W. Osburn, 43, of Sallisaw, who was charged in November 2005 with lewd molestation. Osburn's trial is expected to start Thursday, the jury docket indicated.
