JACKSON — Closing arguments were expected to begin today morning for a woman charged with orchestrating the kidnapping of a 6-year-old girl from her east Mississippi elementary school.
Some of the most dramatic testimony in the trial of Jesse Mae Pollard came from the victim’s mother and Pollard’s own son, who was a basketball player at the University of Alabama before his arrest in the case.
Federal prosecutors have recommended deferred prosecution for Pollard’s son, who testified Wednesday that his mother was behind the abduction. Deferred prosecution means the conspiracy charge against 19-year-old Devonta Pollard would be dismissed if he stays out of trouble for two years while on what is effectively probation.
Pollard had been a high school basketball star in Mississippi before getting a scholarship to Alabama in 2012. He withdrew from the university after being charged in the kidnapping and is now playing for East Mississippi Community College.
Pollard testified Wednesday that his mother, Jesse Mae Brown Pollard, was behind the plot, which authorities say was designed to pressure her cousin, the child’s mother, in a dispute over land and a portable storage shed.
Wearing a dark suit and tie, Devonta Pollard rarely looked in his mother’s direction while on the stand.
He testified that he did not know about the plot until authorities were already investigating, though he acknowledged not telling investigators after he learned his mother and others were involved.
Assistant U.S. Attorney John Dowdy asked Devonta Pollard at one point, “knowing what you know now,” who was behind the kidnapping.
“My mother,” he responded.
The child was taken from East Kemper Elementary School in the Kemper County community of Scooba on April 30 and dropped off unharmed near a stranger’s mobile home on a rural Mississippi road the next day.
Defense attorney Tom Turner told the jury during opening statements that Jesse Pollard was under pressure from events in her life and did not know what she was doing at the time of the abduction.
“She was completely out of control of her own actions,” he said at the time.
The defense called no witnesses.
Dowdy said during opening statements in the case that the child’s mother, Roshell Ford, bought a piece of foreclosed land that once belonged to Jesse Pollard. Jesse Pollard wanted the land back and a portable shed that was on it, Dowdy said.
Dowdy also said Jesse Pollard hired someone to take the shed, and Ford reported that to police.
Five people, most of them related to each other and Pollard, pleaded guilty in the case Nov. 6. They include a school secretary charged with telling Jesse Pollard where to find the child that day: in the school library.
Investigators say the child was taken from the school to a hotel in Bessemer, Ala., then moved to a hotel in Laurel, Miss. She was dropped off near Enterprise, Miss., the next day, after the FBI began to focus on Jesse Pollard.
Devonta Pollard is now attending East Mississippi Community College and scored 18 points in a game Tuesday night, according to his lawyer, Lisa Ross.
“Devonta Pollard was put in an impossible position, but I think that in this case, in the end justice will prevail. He told the truth today. Every child loves his mother, and for him to say his mother did something so horrendous, it devastated him,” Ross said in a telephone interview after court Wednesday.
Both sides rested Wednesday afternoon. Jesse Pollard had been expected to testify, but did not.
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