The jury began deliberating in the case of Thomas Harold Blevins at 1 p.m. today.
Blevins, the former band teacher at Lakeview Middle School, is accused of molesting two former students, one while she was still at the school, another who had moved on to high school.
During his closing argument, Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney Herbert "Buzz" Franklin told the jury that Blevins manipulated teenage girls to please him.
Pushing back against the defense's argument that Blevins was merely trying to be a good teacher who tried to communicate with students like a teenager himself, Franklin said that he only seemed to take that approach with female classmates. He pointed out that Blevins texted three of those former classmates thousands of times.
Thomas Blevins, a former Lakeview Middle School band teacher accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a student, appears before Judge Jon "Bo" Wood during the first day of trial at the Catoosa County Courthouse on August 11, 2015. "That's more than he was texting his wife," he told the jury. "Think about that. It's not the boys. It's the little girls."
He continued: "Everything points to this man being a pervert, a sexual abuser of children. Don't let this happen in Catoosa County."
In his own closing argument this morning, defense attorney Chris Townley focused on the victims' testimonies. He said they both changed their versions of events in the years between when police interviewed them and when the victims testified in this week's trial.
One victim said the room was pitch black, and Blevins told the jury that her description of what followed couldn't hold weight. How could she see, Blevins asked.
The other victim couldn't remember whether Blevins molested her before or after a band trip to Chicago. She said he molested her once. She also said he molested her twice.
"Thomas Blevins sent inappropriate text messages," Townley said. "But not sexual messages. ... He's not guilty of these charges."
Blevins faces six counts of child molestation, six counts of sexual assault by a person in a position of authority, two counts of enticing a child for indecent purposes, two counts of false imprisonment and one count of aggravated child molestation.