Saturday, March 20, 1999

Jury clears man of Pleasant Ridge attack

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Defense said neighbors set up defendant

BY DAN HORN
The Cincinnati Enquirer

        From the day he was charged with viciously assaulting a child, Jimmy White complained that the harsh words of his own neighbors had cost him his freedom.

        In a Hamilton County courtroom Friday, a dozen strangers gave it back.

        After four hours of deliberations, the jury concluded that Mr. White was not the man who bound, gagged and assaulted a 14-year-old girl last summer in Pleasant Ridge.

        After hearing Common Pleas Judge Norbert Nadel read the verdict, Mr. White embraced his attorney and repeatedly whispered “Thank you” to the 12 jurors.

        “You're going home,” said his attorney, Clyde Bennett II. “It's over now. You're going home.”

        Mr. White won his case despite the testimony of the girl.

        The girl told the jury in gruesome detail how a man tied her up near some railroad tracks on Aug. 12, molested her and cut her several times with a knife.

        When the girl was asked by prosecutors if she recognized her attacker, she pointed to Mr. White.

        “Yeah,” she said. “It was him.”

        But Mr. Bennett reminded jurors that the girl had failed to pick Mr. White out of a police lineup shortly after the attack.

        She did not identify him, he said, until several neighbors told the girl that they believed Mr. White was the attacker. He said those neighbors then arranged for Mr. White to visit a home where the girl was staying, giving her a chance to see him in person.

        Mr. Bennett described the meeting as a “set-up” that eventually led to his client's arrest.

        “This was a brutal, heinous, horrible crime,” Mr. Bennett said. “But Jimmy White did not commit it. He knows it, I know it, his family knows and now a jury knows it.”

        He said Mr. White, 40, was in the vicinity of the attack because he had gone shoe shopping for his sons at a nearby store.

        The girl said her attacker wore a green hat and green shirt, and a neighbor said he saw Mr. White wearing the same outfit around the time of the attack.

        But Mr. Bennett said Mr. White does not own a green hat. He also noted that the clothing description was similar to the employee uniform of a store located a few blocks from the crime scene.

        Prosecutors said tests of blood, partial fingerprints and other forensic evidence did not link Mr. White to the crime.

        His first trial in December ended without a verdict when the jury declared it was hopelessly deadlocked, voting 10-2 for acquittal.

        After hearing the verdict in the latest trial, Mr. White's relatives shouted “thank you” and exchanged hugs.

        “We know he's innocent,” said his sister, Deborah Pitts. “It's been hell.”

       

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