Jury Convicts Ex-Teacher in Molestations

After hearing more than five months of testimony from 141 witnesses, a jury took less than two hours to find Northridge private elementary school operator Campbell Hugh Greenup guilty Thursday of 18 counts of molesting six girl students.

Greenup, 60, who stood impassively as the verdicts were read, faces a maximum prison term of 36 years when he is sentenced May 4 by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David A. Horowitz.

Greenup, remanded to jail without bail by the judge, was found guilty of lewd acts upon minors involving students aged 4 to 11 between the years 1978 and 1984.

Prosecutor Elated

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kenneth R. Freeman, who had also prosecuted Greenup during a previous trial that ended in a hung jury, expressed elation at the jury’s swift decision.

“I feel the jury saw the evidence and voted appropriately,� said Freeman, emphasizing that he will seek prison time for Greenup, whose school is closed. “Sometimes when the evidence is so overwhelming, when you have witness after witness saying things happened . . . the jury . . . doesn’t need to spend (a long) amount of time.�

But Greenup’s lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Henry J. Hall, was angry, saying, the jurors “obviously didn’t evaluate any of the evidence. I mean, God, how can you evaluate . . . months worth of evidence . . . with hundreds of exhibits in two hours? It’s ridiculous.�

Hall added that he will move for a new trial at the time of sentencing and will file an appeal if Horowitz denies the motion.

Several jurors, meanwhile, emphatically defended their actions.

“We discussed every count, we were extremely democratic, everyone had a voice in what was said,� said foreman Norman Orsan, 48.

‘Review That Every Day’

“We did not review item by item all the evidence,� admitted Orsan, a Pacific Bell senior engineer from North Hollywood. “(But) when you’re in court every day and you hear children say things that happened to them that they poignantly remember. . . . We review that every day when we go home in our minds.�

Juror Michael Whitfield, 34, said he was swayed in large part by a piece of evidence that Freeman had labeled “the scene of the crime�--a large green chair that Greenup sat on in his classroom. The prosecution contended that Greenup would often lean backward in his chair, his head resting against the fabric. Greenup, however, maintained that he always sat upright and he brought the chair to the courtroom as evidence.

Freeman called an expert witness who testified that the chair’s fabric had been altered to hide a spot where Greenup’s head would have rested.

“I felt he lied about cleaning the spot on the chair,� said Whitfield, a Los Angeles postal clerk. “That wasn’t even the main issue, but if he was going to lie on that, why wouldn’t he lie about anything else?�

Greenup, who had spoken confidently of an acquittal to reporters minutes before the verdict was announced, has repeatedly acknowledged having placed female students on his lap during regular school hours in his classroom. Greenup said he often kissed their hair and rubbed their backs, but he contended that he was only expressing affection and not molesting them.

Freeman, however, maintained that Greenup went much further, sexually arousing himself by fondling the children’s buttocks and genitals if they did not protest.

“He would do as much as the children would let him do,� the prosecutor said after the verdict was announced.

In Greenup’s first trial, the final split on the jury’s deadlocked votes ranged from 9 to 3 in favor of guilty to 7 to 5 in favor of not guilty. That jury also acquitted Greenup on two additional counts of lewd conduct.

New Testimony

In the retrial, Freeman presented the new testimony about the allegedly altered chair, and he also called to the stand many of the witnesses the defense had called in the first trial, even though some were hostile to the prosecution.

Hall, for his part, had sought to present evidence that the Greenup case was unjustly filed during a “political witch hunt� by then-Dist. Atty. Robert H. Philibosian. Philibosian, Hall contended, was seeking to file a flurry of sex molestations cases to grab headlines during his unsuccessful election campaign against Ira Reiner. Horowitz, however, refused to admit any such political evidence before the jury.

The lanky, flush-faced Greenup, who had vociferously protested his innocence on the witness stand during two lengthy trials, was led off to a holding cell by a bailiff three years after authorities received their first tip on the case from the parent of a 5-year-old girl, Los Angeles Police Detective Steven Hales said.