After about 5 hours of deliberations, a 12-member jury returned mostly not guilty verdicts in a trial that threatened to send a man to prison for the rest of his life.

Bill Warren, 38, faced up to 400 years if convicted on all 27 felony charges – which included 14 counts of criminal confinement, 3 counts of intimidation, 1 count of strangulation, 1 count of sexual battery, 1 count each of battery causing serious bodily injury and battery causing serious bodily injury to a victim under the age of 14, 2 counts of criminal deviate conduct, and 1 count each of theft, obstruction of justice and resisting law enforcement.

A 27th charge of being a habitual offender was also filed and will be determined at Warren’s sentencing, which has been set for Dec. 10. On the six charges Warren faces approximately 30 years in prison.

Bill Warren

Warren was found guilty on 1 charge of battery causing serious bodily injury, 1 charge of sexual battery, 1 charge of intimidation, 1 charge of obstruction of justice, 1 charge of theft and 1 charge of resisting law enforcement.

In the end, the jury did not find enough evidence to convict Warren on any of the charges that he criminally confined a woman or her young child, or that he caused injury to the child by putting her in the trunk of a car.

In a criminal trial, the jury must find guilt without a reasonable doubt.

There was some confusion in the courtroom after the jury was dismissed. Defense attorney Alan J. Zimmerman said he didn’t understand one of the charges that Judge Duane Huffer read aloud as a guilty verdict. “Count 6 is battery resulting in bodily injury,” he said, “but you said attempted criminal confinement. When did that change?”

Judge Huffer said the charge did not change and read it again as attempted criminal confinement. A juror has told us there were no amended charges and that the jurors found Warren guilty on the initial battery charge as it related to the female victim in the case.

Warren is a registered sex offender, a punishment which resulted from a case in Wabash County from 1997 when he pleaded guilty to a Class B felony of criminal confinement and a Class B felony of criminal deviate conduct.

In that case, according to Indiana Code, criminal deviate conduct as a Class B felony is described as actions which knowingly or intentionally cause another person to perform or submit to deviate sexual conduct when the victim is compelled by force or imminent threat of force; that the victim is unaware that the conduct is occurring, or that the victim is so mentally disabled or deficient that consent to the conduct cannot be given.

Criminal confinement as a Class B felony happens when a person who knowingly or intentionally confines another person without the other person’s consent; or removes another person by fraud, enticement, force or threat of force from one place to another.

In the Wabash County case, Warren was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Warren has been jailed in the Kosciusko County Jail since his arrest on Aug. 30, 2010.

In closing arguments before the jury deliberated, Kosciusko County Prosecutor Dan Hampton told the jury, “When you apply your common sense to this case the evidence is overwhelming on who to believe and who not to believe.”

As Hampton led the jury through each of the charges and the allegations relating to each one, he referred to the sexual assault K.W. described which he said involved penetration of her external female genitalia. “However slight that penetration is by a finger … it is criminal deviate conduct.”

Hampton made his closing statements brief and closed with, “No one has the right to violate and terrorize two human beings like Billy Warren did on Aug. 29th and 30th, 2010.”

Zimmerman closed with the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, recounting it as “a fairy tale. It’s a fairy tale … and I would submit to you the state’s case is a fairy tale. It’s sexy; we’ve heard a lot of about sex here … but it’s not reality.”

In recounting the initial video recorded investigation of K.W. given hours after her alleged ordeal, Zimmerman told the jury what they actually saw was “Incoherent ramblings of someone hopped up on methamphetamine, marijuana and illegal pills.”

He added that the state never provided the handcuffs K.W. said were used to confine her to two different trees. He then posed a series of questions for the jury to consider: “Where’s the photos of the second tree?” “Where’s the marks on her wrists from the handcuffs? You saw pictures of her hands. It all goes up in pixie dust.”

And Zimmerman added, “This former stripper must have skin like an alligator to be dragged across gravel” and sustain a few red marks. Zimmerman said there is “overwhelming evidence against” the allegations that have been lodged against Warren. “I absolutely believe my client.”

In a final rebuttal, Hampton said, “(K.W.) did not sugarcoat who she was” but staunchly stated, “… there is no pixie dust in the state’s case.”

Hampton then replayed the 911 call that K.W. made on the late morning of Aug. 30, 2010, and several clips from Warren’s initial interview with police. He pulled out an easel and set on it a photo of K.W. and her daughter and said, “This whole case rests on credibility.”