NEWSBYNOAH ARENSTEIN

Tonya Craft collapsed into her attorneys’ arms on Wednesday as the bailiff’s booming voice filled the courtroom with 22 declarations of not guilty.

Supporters could be heard cheering from outside after the first “not guilty,” but Craft herself waited to show emotion until the final count was read. The verdict ended a two-year struggle for Craft to “prove” her innocence of allegations of child molestation, in a judicial system that too often assumes guilt from the beginning. As we've previously blogged before, Craft's case was one ridden with egregious behavior from the judge, police and district attorneys involved.

Now comes the next step: picking up the pieces resulting from the massive failure — at every level — of northern Georgia's Lookout Mountain Judicial District. One immediate step was taken by Craft’s attorneys, who requested that the FBI investigate the lead detective on the case for falsifying evidence when she added further “revelations” from the child accusers.

Regardless of the happy ending for Craft, injustice is a common theme in northern Georgia — a region that has seen 80 child predator arrests in two years, many of them under questionable circumstances.

Tonya Craft was on the stand in Georgia today to defend herself against charges of child molestation, making an already riveting trial even more dramatic. We've covered the trial here and here, but for those of you who've missed it, Craft is facing charges in a trial that's lately turned a three-ring circus — with judges and prosecutors turning to increasingly outlandish tactics to railroad the defendant.

Though her case started as a backwater controversy, it's lately picked up media attention from across the country.

Yesterday, Craft could only answer a few questions before Judge House claimed that her attorney was "playing to the media and jury," and ordered an interruption, retreating into a conference in his chambers (watch the exchange here).

When she returned, Craft answered questions about the multiple affairs of her former husband (and accuser), as well as her relationship with the alleged victims and their parents. At one point, she looked directly at the jury and declared: "I did not and have not sexually abused any child."

Today, in a rambling cross examination, prosecutor Len Gregor tried to link questions about Craft's earlier marriages and her drinking to the alleged child molestation. Yet Gregor hardly pressed Craft on the actual abuse charges before he finished. At the end of the day, the defense rested, and the trial will continue on Monday.

Will Craft manage to successfully fight these charges? She's certainly made a shrewd move of hiring outside lawyers, whose livelihood does not depend on currying favor with local officials, and who have no fear of burning bridges.

In Catoosa County, Georgia, Tonya Craft's child molestation trial continues to devolve into a absurd witch-hunt. Only now, the national media is actually starting to pay attention.

Yesterday, Assistant District Attorney Chris Arnt asked a detective involved in the case whether she “get[s] paid per child molester the way the defense does.” I'm not sure what Arnt is suggesting, but it's clear that Arnt's getting a paycheck for his services in this trial, too. And the only people losing money are the taxpayers of Catoosa County, who will likely be forced to repeat this whole farce again once the verdict is thrown out on appeal. (If you missed our previous coverage of the case, you can read up here.)

As the trial has gone on, it's become increasingly clear that the supposed physical evidence of molestation amounts to much ado about nothing. Meanwhile, the prosecutors’ cross examinations have become increasingly unhinged from the original molestation charges, and they’ve ratcheted up their character attacks on Craft — all with the blessing of the judge in the case, Brian House.

There's little doubt that a guilty verdict will fail on appeal. Yet Arnt and his fellow prosecutor Len Gregor seem intent on achieving one anyway, no matter the cost. They've badgered witnesses with questions about Craft’s exercise and lawn-mowing habits, of all things. They've asked whether Craft is a narcissist, and if Craft ever passed out in a girlfriend’s bed after a night of drinking. These so-called “sordid revelations” that the kind that only a puritan (or an unhinged prosecutor) would connect to evidence of child molestation.

People accused of child molestation are rarely sympathetic characters. But someone like former Georgia kindergarten teacher Tonya Craft might make you think again.

Accusations that Craft (left) molested three young girls at a 2008 slumber party — including her own child — have torn apart the small community of Chickamagua, which lies just south of the Georgia/Tennessee border. The crime would be reprehensible, if Craft actually did it. But there are glaring inconsistencies in the testimony of the girls and their parents, a fact compounded by how egregiously the police, prosecutors and judge involved have behaved.

At this point, Craft's trial has devolved into a ludicrous, back-and-forth character assassination of everyone involved. Prosecutors Chris Arnt and Len Gregor, in particular, have asked lurid and wholly irrelevant questions about Craft’s sexual history, while her attorneys have been barred from introducing evidence of Craft’s good character.

The trial is now in its third week and has turned into a virtual circus, one presided over by Catoosa County Superior Court Judge Brian House. House had previously represented Craft’s ex-husband during their divorce, and yet he's refused to recuse himself from the case. This by itself will almost surely require a new trial. What's more? House has also violated ethical rules by speaking to the mother of one of the accusers for over an hour before she testified. House also allowed Craft’s ex-husband to testify that Craft viewed a lesbian pornographic video — 10 years ago — over objections by Craft’s attorneys.