Superior Court Judge Robert C. Ervin convened a hearing on the removal of Newman on Monday morning.
James P. Cooney III, the independent counsel, said in opening arguments that ample grounds exist to warrant the removal of the district attorney. He cited the three pillars of the case against the elected prosecutor for Henderson, Polk and Transylvania counties:
A plea deal Newman made that allowed a defendant charged with five child sexual abuse felonies to plead guilty to one misdemeanor in a brief proceeding that the victim was not made aware of.
The successful charge of vindictive prosecution by a defendant jailed for eight and a half years, a case currently on appeal before the state Supreme Court.
Newman’s actions in the case of James Franklin Sapp and a charge that he pursued a “vindictive prosecution” in a separate case are the subject of a hearing in Henderson County Superior Court on Monday to decide whether the district attorney is removed from office. Newman’s actions in the Sapp case were explored at length last Nov. 11-12 by the state Bar’s Disciplinary Hearing Commission, which ruled that Newman failed to notify the alleged victim in Sapp’s case of his plea-agreement hearing and that he had made a false statement to the District Court judge who approved the plea agreement.
June 12, 2014: Valerie Marie Owenby, who was then 12 years old, and her mother, Carol Lynn Owenby, report to the Henderson County sheriff’s office that James Franklin Sapp, a next door neighbor, had sexually assaulted her from the time she was 5 years old to the present.
Aug. 6, 2014: Sheriff’s Detective Tonya Reeves submits a search warrant application detailing Valerie’s accusations of sexual assault by Sapp from the time she was 5 until she was 12 and her accusations that Sapp “told her she would kill her dad if she told anyone” and when he stopped the abuse threatened to kill her family if she told anyone. The search warrant, granted by Superior Court Judge Mark Powell, compels Sapp to pose for photos from the waist down to corroborate Valerie’s statement that he had identifying marks around his penis area.
The alleged abuser, James Franklin Sapp, lived next door to the victim on top of Jeter Mountain. The child was 12 years old when she and her mother, Carol Lynn Owenby Siebert, met with a Henderson County sheriff’s deputy at the Waffle House on Upward Road to report “a statutory rape that had occurred over several years at the Sapp residence,” a search warrant application said.
Four days later, on June 16, 2014, the girl told detective Tonya Reeves during a lengthier interview that Sapp had started molesting her at age 5 and had raped her repeatedly over the next seven years. The girl told Reeves that “there was about 40 occurrences when something happened.”
Valerie Owenby, known until now in court records at V.O., wants everyone to know her name.
Owenby grew up in the house her grandfather built, on a mountaintop in Henderson County. She lived there with her father, brother and grandparents at the end of a country road, surrounded by woods and very few neighbors.
The closest neighbor was James Franklin Sapp, who Owenby, now 22, said sexually assaulted, raped and terrorized her from age 5-12, most of her childhood.
“When I was 12 I started my period, and he decided not to do it anymore and told me to keep my mouth shut or my family would die,” Owenby said.