The trial of a former Alamance-Burlington elementary school principal who is charged with sexually assaulting a student got off to a plodding start this week in Alamance County superior court.
Jury selection was scheduled to begin Monday morning in the trial of former Eastlawn Elementary School principal Daniel McInnis, 45, white, male, of 632 Country Club Drive, Burlington, who is charged with: statutory sex offense with child by an adult; sex act with a student; indecent liberties with a child; and sexual battery.
The offenses allegedly occurred between October and December 2023 and involved a male student who was six years old at the time, based on court documents.
The state alleges that the victim initially told his mother about the alleged sexual assault on December 8, 2023, according to a motion filed earlier this month by Alamance County assistant district attorney Elizabeth Olivier.
The victim also disclosed during a “child forensic interview” – it is unclear whether it had been conducted by Burlington police investigators or the Crossroads Sexual Assault Resource Center in Burlington – that the defendant had “pulled him out of the class and took him to the bathroom where the assault occurred,” based on the motion that Olivier filed October 15.
However, McInnis’ defense attorneys contend that the victim later recanted his accusation against McInnis to his teacher, Xavier Jones.
The defense filed a motion in late September to compel production of Jones’ personnel records, as well as those for Syeda Smith-Williams – who succeeded McInnis as principal at Eastlawn and “indicated that Mr. Jones was told to report the recantation to human resources” – which are believed to contain exculpatory information about McInnis. [Smith-Williams’ contract as principal of Eastlawn Elementary School wasn’t renewed earlier this year; she has since filed a petition in Alamance County civil superior court, asking a judge to review that decision and order ABSS to reinstate her to her former position or a similar one.]
The defense has subpoenaed the accuser’s former teacher, Jones, to testify at McInnis’ trial, according to the court file, which indicates that Jones now lives in Charlotte.
The defense also has subpoenaed documents relating to a “U-Visa” application filed by the victim’s family, which McInnis’ attorneys contend is “clearly exculpatory,” based on a motion filed by the defense this spring.
Federal immigration law allows illegal immigrants and their families who are victims of crime and have been granted “U nonimmigrant status” to remain in the U.S. and eventually become lawful permanent residents, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency (see related story, this edition).
Olivier countered at a hearing this spring that no such information is in the file.
The defense argued at hearing in April that the D.A.’s office “has been involved in assisting the family of the victim, and/or the victim in [its] application for a U-Visa . . . The state’s assertion that they ‘do not have any paperwork on it’ defies belief and is unacceptable.”
Earlier this month, Olivier filed a motion seeking to prevent that information from being introduced into evidence during McInnis’ trial, while also acknowledging that the victim and his family had consulted an immigration attorney in late November 2024.
“Any evidence regarding the victim’s or his family members’ immigration status or their inquiries about a U Visa are irrelevant to any fact in issue in the case,” Olivier asserted in her October 15 motion.
Alamance County resident superior court judge C. Douglas Green agreed at a subsequent hearing to allow the defense to mention the U-Visa application but not the fact that the victim’s family is supposedly under an active deportation order.
McInnis has rejected a plea offer by from the district attorney’s office to plead guilty to one count of a crime against nature, which he reaffirmed during his plea colloquy before the judge on Monday morning. “Your honor, I am not guilty; I reject the plea offer,” McInnis declared Monday morning.
If convicted, the charge carries a sentence of 19 months’ prison time but no requirement to register as a sex offender upon release.
With no prior criminal record, he would more than likely receive probation, Green said at the beginning of McInnis’ trial on Monday morning.
The existing charges against McInnis carry a maximum prison sentence of up to 434 months, plus 60 days (for a total of about 36 years), plus registry as a convicted sex offender upon release from prison, Green said Monday.
Names of potential jurors missing from list given to defense
Just as jury selection was set to begin Monday morning, the judge halted the process due to procedural issues that McInnis’ defense attorneys contended would’ve violated his constitutional right to due process.
McInnis’ attorneys, John W. Cox of Graham and Lisa A. Dubs of Hickory, raised objections over discrepancies between the jury list that they’d been furnished on September 29, which at 10 pages, was half as long as the 20-page jury list Olivier handed over Monday morning, Dubs told Green. (It also violated a state law that dictates the 30-day timeframe in which the clerk must prepare the jury list, according to Dubs.)
The discrepancies between the two lists violated McInnis’ right to a fair jury selection process, Dubs argued, citing “a plethora of case law that talks about whether that [jury] selection process was fair.
“We don’t know how those names got on there,” said Dubs. “Before we go forward with this jury selection, those questions need to be answered.”
Both the prosecution and the defense have a right to vet prospective jurors – including by researching court records, social media, and other online activity – in an effort to ensure that that prospective jurors are fair and unbiased, per Dubs’ description.
The defense attorneys also objected to a jury seating chart that Dubs said they had received Monday morning, which listed the names of the first 12 prospective jurors to be called for questioning.
“It appears that the first 12 jurors have already been selected – it appears somewhere outside this courtroom and not under the supervision of your honor,” Dubs said referring to a jury seating chart that had also been provided to the defense that morning as she argued several motions outside of the jury pool’s presence. “We don’t know how they were called, if they were random. We are starting off this trial with the first 12 selected. There needs to be an inquiry into how they were already selected outside of court… It was all done without our knowledge. It was something we [learned] when we started at 10:20 this morning.”
Initially, Green called a 45-minute recess so the defense attorneys could review the two lists of potential jurors before sending most of the jury pool home for the day.
Green countered, “Only the attorneys and judge know who is coming. There is nothing that was decided yesterday, or before yesterday.” The prosecutor and judge described that process of developing a seating chart for the first 12 prospective jurors to be questioned as a standard procedure. Another court assistant later said that the first 12 jurors selected for questioning had been chosen at random using the state’s jury management computer program, Genesis.
“What is it that you are suggesting?” Green asked Dubs, who said the defense needed more than 45 minutes to properly vet the additional jurors whose names were on the jury list that the prosecutor received and furnished to the defense on Monday morning.
Dubs also argued that the prosecutor’s jury list included more details – such as each prospective juror’s name, age, and home address – than the list that the defense received, which listed each juror’s address as the location of the criminal court building, at 212 West Elm Street in Graham. That’s a due process violation under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and two sections within Article 1 of the North Carolina Constitution, she said.
Green sustained the objections and instructed prospective jurors to return at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, explaining that the defense had been given an inaccurate jury list and needed time to review the additional names on the prosecutor’s list.
Just before 12:00 Noon on Monday, Green dismissed approximately 47 prospective jurors, but asked some two dozen others with potential scheduling conflicts to stay behind for questioning. He ultimately excused 19 of 24 potential jurors – out of a pool of 71 potential jurors summoned for jury duty on Monday – for reasons that ranged from previously-scheduled medical procedures to non-refundable vacations that had been booked months and weeks earlier.
Tuesday’s jury panel told not to report
There was also a hiccup on the second day of jury selection.
Three separate pools of prospective jurors had been summoned for jury duty on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. But those who were summoned to report for jury duty on Tuesday were later told not to come, the courtroom clerk informed the judge Tuesday morning. [Each day of jury selection customarily begins with a new pool of prospective jurors.]
“When we got here, we learned that the panel for today had been dismissed,” Dubs told Green.
The judge appeared clearly exasperated. “I did not ask for them to be dismissed,” he told the clerk. “I asked them to return this morning. Do we have any coming this afternoon?”
The clerk said she didn’t think so.
Olivier suggested that the attorneys begin the selection process by questioning the 58 jurors who had been in the first day’s jury pool and returned for jury duty on Tuesday morning.
“Tell them [the courtroom bailiffs] to come on over with what they’ve got,” Green said.
Green asked the first 12 prospective jurors about such things: what part of the county he or she resides in; race and gender; place of employment and profession; marital status; and whether he or she knows the defendant, attorneys, any prospective witnesses, and/or any other parties to the case.
Olivier later posed more than 30 questions to the first 12 prospective jurors, asking about such things as whether they or a family member had ever been the victim of a sexual assault, and whether they’d be willing to convict someone based solely on the testimony of one witness.
Child sexual assault “is a crime of secrecy,” Olivier described to the first 12 prospective jurors.
Olivier later asked for two of the first 12 prospective jurors to be stricken.
Meanwhile, Dubs later questioned the 12 prospective jurors – including two replacements for those Olivier had challenged – about such things as whether they’d followed the “MeToo movement,” in which alleged sexual assault victims came forward to share their experiences, most notably at the hands of former movie producer Harvey Weinstein, who was later convicted of sexually assaulting multiple women. None indicated having a strong opinion one way or another about that movement.
Jury selection resumes this morning in the superior courtroom at the J.B. Allen, Jr. Court House. Opening statements are scheduled to begin Friday morning in the upstairs courtroom at the Alamance County Historic Court House. The trial is expected to run between two and three weeks.
McInnis remains employed with ABSS but suspended without pay, school officials reaffirmed for The Alamance News Tuesday afternoon.
