SEVIERVILLE — Dr. Rodney Carter walked out of the Sevier County Courthouse Friday a free man, with no charges hanging over his head concerning improper sexual contact with male patients at his medical practice.

After three days of testimony, a Sevier County jury of eight men and four women took three hours to return not guilty verdicts on four charges of rape and three charges of sexual assault.

Carter left the courtroom after celebrating for some time with his wife and daughters as well as a number of supporters who sat behind him throughout the trial.

“Praise God,” he said. “I thank my family and my counsel, (Defense attorney Bryan Delius), for going the extra mile, and my church family, and the patients who believed in me and kept the practice going.”

The state suspended Carter’s license to practice medicine after a grand jury issued the presentments against him. He will now have to go before the Board of Medical Examiners to try to get his license back, something Delius said they will work to do as soon as possible.

“We’re going to get his medical license back,” Delius said.

They will seek an agreement to regain the license based on the jury’s ruling, and if that doesn’t happen they are prepared to move forward with a trial before the board to regain the license.

Carter, owner of LeConte Family Practice, was charged with having inappropriate sexual conduct with four male patients, including one who was underage at the time the alleged incidents. (The Mountain Press does not typically identify the alleged victims in cases involving sex crimes.) All the charges involved activities that the four men said happened in his offices during what were supposed to be medical exams.

The patients told the jury Carter sexually touched them during exams and performed unnecessary rectal exams upon them while alone in the exam rooms. Assistant District Attorney General Steve Hawkins attempted to prove the exams were not warranted based on their medical complaints.

In his closing argument, Hawkins reminded the jury that the four alleged victims didn’t know each other and had never met before they testified in hearings about the case.

“You either believe this is the biggest conspiracy in the world … or that man is guilty,” he said, pointing to Carter.

Members of Carter’s staff testified they were present throughout the exams, and nothing improper happened. Delius sought to show that the exams were proper procedure, based on the symptoms presented by the alleged victims.

If the charges were tried separately, he said, the cases wouldn’t stand at all. “Why are they here together? (Because) they won’t stand alone.”

He displayed pictures of the Carter with his wife and their two daughters as he made the closing argument.

The jury retired at about 6 p.m. to deliberate; before they did so Judge Richard Vance randomly selected two men and two women as the “alternates” from the panel of 16 that heard the case, leaving eight men and four women to consider the charges.

Delius had issued subpoenas for Mayor Bryan Atchley and Sevierville Fire Chief Mike Rawlings, but did not call them to the stand. Carter worked at Sevier County Nursing Home, where Atchley is director.

The defense’s main witness in the morning was Newport physician Dr. Michael Hood. Hood, who is also an assistant professor at the James H. Quillen School of Medicine for East Tennessee State University, acknowledged a manual from the school showed a doctor performing a genital exam without gloves.

However, during cross-examination by Hawkins, he said the manual was outdated, and that is not what he teaches his students or how he conducts the exams himself. “I don’t teach from a book, I teach from my experience and I stay up to date,” he said, adding he uses a number of periodicals to do that.

Having reviewed the medical records of the patients, Hood said the exams performed by Hood were “acceptable” procedure.

Rectal exams, he said, should not take minutes, as the alleged victims said they did with Carter. They should take more in the range of half a minute. He also said he would typically perform rectal exams such as the ones involved in this case a handful of times a year at his office out of hundreds of visits for men the same age as the alleged victims.

The alleged victims said their rectal exams or prostate massages lasted longer than that, and that Carter touched their genitals while he was not wearing gloves. Several said that he urged them to stimulate themselves or attempted to stimulate them sexually while they were alone in the exam rooms with him.

Delius also called several members of the staff from LeConte Family Practice, who said they were present during the exams in question and were present at the office whenever he performed such exams. Protocol required they always had another staff member present with Carter during exams where patients were unclothed, they said. They told the jury nothing improper happened during the exams.

For his last witness, called one of Carter’s daughters to the stand and asked her, point blank, “Is your father homosexual?”

“No,” she said. “He loves my mother”

The case featured testimony by expert doctors for both sides, and references to medical manuals that appeared to bolster each side’s case.

Carter faced similar charges in Pennsylvania in the 1990s; a judge dismissed one charge against him and a jury acquitted him in the other. He is facing a civil suit from one of his alleged victims in this most recent case.

jfarrell@themountainpress.com