Youth Sex Crimes Trial Delayed for Former Clinton High Educator John Langworthy

SNAP
November 26, 2012

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Attorneys say the trial for John Langworthy, a former Clinton High School teacher and church music director accused of molesting young boys several years ago in Mississippi and Texas, looks like it will be continued.

Officials in the District Attorney’s office as well as Langworthy’s attorney Jeff Rimes said that his trial, set to begin today in Hinds County Circuit Court. It was set to start at 9 a.m. and then was listed on the docket at 1 p.m.

Both Rimes and the DA’s office confirmed that the 1 p.m. listing is neither a trial nor a motion hearing. Rimes said he expects that the trial will be continued.

Langworthy was arrested in September 2011. He was indicted on eight counts of sexually molesting five boys ages 10-13 between 1980 and 1984, authorities said. Two of those counts are in Clinton, and six are in Jackson.

In October, Rimes filed a motion to dismiss the indictment, contending the statute of limitations has expired that would allow Hinds County to file the charges, an issue that came up not long after Langworthy was charged.

Rimes said in his motion that the statute of limitations potentially affecting Langworthy "expired Dec. 31, 1986, nearly three years before the state's statute of limitations was amended in 1989 to extend for a period of seven years."

Langworthy is the former minister of music at Clinton's Morrison Heights Baptist Church. In August of last year, he admitted to the congregation that he had sexual indiscretions with teenage boys in Mississippi and Texas in the past.

Langworthy resigned from his church position in May of 2011. He did not return to the high school last fall as director of the Arrow Singers choir.