Jury resumes deliberations in assault case

Kim Smith

Wednesday, March 28, 2001 | 11:31 a.m.

The jury deciding the fate of a former Little League coach accused of sexually assaulting seven young boys resumed deliberations this morning.

The jury in the Garen Pearson case deliberated for about 90 minutes Tuesday without returning a verdict.

Pearson, 42, faces 39 counts of sexual assault and lewdness with a minor, all of which carry a life sentence.

The charges stem as far back as 1994 and involve seven children, four of them youth league baseball players and most between 10 and 12 years old.

Pearson's defense attorneys say the longtime Las Vegas resident regrets what has happened but contends the boys were willing participants.

"We contest, not the facts ... but we question what laws were broken under those facts," public defender Drew Christensen told jurors during closing arguments Tuesday.

Christensen told jurors repeatedly that he doesn't condone what Pearson did, nor does he mean to criticize the boys. However, he said, the boys engaged in sex acts with Pearson repeatedly and obviously knew what they were doing because they didn't tell anyone.

According to Nevada's child sexual assault laws, prosecutors must show the acts were committed against the victims' will or "under conditions in which the perpetrator knows or should have known the victim was mentally or physically incapable of resisting or doesn't understand the nature of the conduct."

Christensen said Pearson should be convicted only of lewdness with a child because it wasn't as though he kidnapped a child from a school yard and physically attacked him in a dark alley.

Pearson was a friend and coach who took certain games too far, Christensen said.