LAS VEGAS
Oct. 06, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
By K.C. HOWARD and FRANK CURRERI
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Three years before he was hired by the Clark County School District, a fifth-grade teacher charged with lewd behavior toward two students was arrested in an incident involving a minor in Pennsylvania.
Mark Zana's 1993 arrest was eventually erased from his record and went undetected by the Clark County School District, when it conducted a background check prior to Zana's hiring in 1996.
Zana worked as a substitute teacher in Pennsylvania before landing a job with the Clark County School District. While living in Pennsylvania, Zana was arrested on Aug. 22, 1993, and charged with corruption of minors and indecent assault, Baden, Pa., Police Chief Daniel Colaizzi told the Beaver County Times on Wednesday.
But under an agreement reached in court, Zana was allowed to enter a program called "Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition," Colaizzi told the Pennsylvania newspaper.
First-time offenders are frequently offered entry into the program, and Zana's participation made it possible for him to have the incident erased from his criminal record, Colaizzi said.
Because his record was expunged, Zana's criminal history reveals no trace of the arrest or any conviction.
Colaizzi told the newspaper he was familiar with Zana's case, but the police chief did not recall the age of the minor involved in the incident or the circumstances that prompted the criminal charges.
Zana was arrested on Sept. 29 and charged with four counts of lewdness with a minor and 10 counts of possession of child pornography. A judge has set his bail at $250,000.
When interviewed by Henderson police, the Kesterson Elementary School teacher said he had been the focus of a prior investigation involving minors.
Zana explained that he caught a female juvenile stealing and, when questioned about the theft, she claimed Zana had asked her to fondle him. Zana told investigators the case had been dismissed.
It was unclear Wednesday if the incident Zana referred to was the same one for which he was arrested in Pennsylvania in 1993.
Exactly when the Pennsylvania incident was removed from Zana's record is also unknown, though he was hired by the Clark County School District on Oct. 7, 1996.
School officials said Zana, like all prospective teachers, would have been required to self-declare any investigations, charges or convictions he had on his record involving sexual, violent or drug-related behavior. He would also have been required to disclose if an employer had terminated him or if his teaching license was ever subject to a hearing. Former supervisors would have filled out similar anonymous questionnaires on Zana's behalf.
The school district also sends applicants' fingerprints to a state criminal database and the FBI's National Crime Information Center.
"If something bad had come back, we wouldn't hire them," said Pat Nelson, a district spokeswoman.
Nelson wouldn't speak specifically about Zana's case.
According to the FBI, if a judge had expunged Zana's offenses, the National Crime Information Center's report on Zana's background probably wouldn't show any record of the arrest.
"If you run a search based on a person's name, date of birth and identifiers, which is how people are run when the school district sends it through, it will show up with no record at all of an arrest or a trial or anything," said FBI Special Agent David Schrom.
In order for school officials to discover there was any previous offense, Zana "would have to tell them," Schrom said.
Zana remained in the Henderson Detention Center on Wednesday.
Police accuse Zana of twice putting his hand down a girl's shirt in school and allowing another female student to suck on his finger.
Henderson police also said Zana was previously fired from his job as a gymnastics coach because of "inappropriate contact" with students outside the workplace.
Authorities have expanded their search for victims and said they expect to file more charges against Zana.
State officials were surprised to learn Zana's previous arrest had gone undetected by their background check.
State Superintendant of Public Instruction Keith Rheault said if applicants have had a previous offense removed from their record or had their records sealed, the department usually receives notice of those arrests without the conviction information included.
"We flag that license and ask them to provide sufficient evidence of what happened in that case," Rheault said
Rhealt said an applicant in the witness protection system was surprised when his record included 14 pages of convictions.
"He did not get a license," Rheault said. "Luckily everything shows up on their program."
In many cases school officials cannot deny an applicant a teaching license for an expunged offense because the offender has, for example, gone through a rehabilitation program, Rheault said.
The court gives the offender a clean record and even if the state knows about the previous offense they cannot deny a license because of the crime, he said.
Gary Waters, a State Board of Education member, said it's wrong for any court to not provide information on offenses against children or sex crimes.
"There are a lot of barriers out there to getting this information and it seems the defense attorneys and others have done a very good job of protecting their clients," Waters said.
UPDATE
Jul. 04, 2006
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
HENDERSON SCHOOL: Previous arrest revealed
Case against man accused of lewd acts was dismissed
By GLENN PUIT
REVIEW-JOURNAL
A man charged with committing lewd acts against pre-teen students while teaching in Henderson had been arrested in 1998 in connection with an allegation that was nearly identical to some of the allegations in the current criminal case against him, according to court records.
The charge in the 1998 case was dismissed after a family decided it did not want a child to have to testify against Mark Zana. Zana had the records sealed and kept his job with the Clark County School District.
Court records obtained last week by the Review-Journal also indicate that Zana's supervisors at Kesterson Elementary School in Henderson found out three years ago that Zana, 38, had hidden a video camera in one of his classrooms.
The court records also said that at least one of Zana's fellow teachers said he had taken his concern about Zana touching students to school administrators.
Zana stands accused of committing lewd acts or inappropriate touching with at least six students, ages 9 to 12, according to court records.
The Review-Journal sought last week to ask the school district's associate superintendent of human resources, George Ann Rice, how Zana could have kept his job with the school district given his prior arrest and the incident involving the video camera.
Rice did not respond to two requests seeking comment.
On Monday, Darrin Puana, assistant director of employee-management relations, said whether the school district knew about the prior allegations against Zana at the time they unfolded was unclear.
But in 2005, in response to a request filed by the Review-Journal seeking records of school district police cases in which Zana was a subject, the school district police chief wrote that "the only case we have regarding Mark Zana was sealed on December 29, 1999, by the Henderson Justice Court."
Attached to the response was a copy of the court order sealing the records of a 1998 annoying a minor charge that had been dismissed.
Puana said that if the district is made aware of a teacher's arrest, the teacher would be subject to a district investigation. "The district could still investigate independently," Puana said.
He said he could not say whether that was done in Zana's case.
Last year, Zana was charged last year with nine counts of lewdness with a minor under the age of 14 and 12 counts of possession of visual presentation depicting sexual conduct of a child.
Authorities alleged a 12-year-old girl told police that Zana, while working as a teacher at Kesterson, had placed his hand under her shirt on two different occasions in 2004 and touched her breast.
A 9-year-old told police Zana asked her to put her hand down Zana's front pants pocket to retrieve candy in his fifth-grade class.
A 10-year-old told authorities Zana was her fifth-grade teacher when he tickled her and cupped her breast.
Another former student who was in Zana's class during the 2001-02 school year told police she reached into his pants pocket during a class reading session to get a Jolly Rancher candy, causing her to feel Zana's genitals.
Another 10-year-old girl said Zana put his hand down her shirt. The girl said she also put her hand down Zana's pocket twice to get candy.
Another girl, also 10, said Zana put his hand down her shirt and touched her breasts.
And another girl told police that during the 2003-2004 school year, she put her hand in Zana's pocket to put a dime inside.
When Henderson detectives conducted a search at Zana's home and confiscated his computer, they found images depicting child pornography, according to court documents.
Zana has pleaded innocent to the charges.
Last week, Clark County prosecutors filed court motions detailing two previous schoolhouse incidents involving Zana.
Teacher Alina Deitch told police that in 2003 she was a teacher at Kesterson Elementary when another teacher, identified in the court records as Tanya, told her she had turned on a television in Zana's class, and "her image appeared on the screen."
Deitch investigated and found a camera in a box of Xerox paper in Zana's classroom.
"The word 'books' was written in black marker on the box, and the 'o' was cut out of the box, and the camera lens extended through the hole," the court records said.
Moments later, Zana showed up and said he had received permission from his brother, who he said was a police officer, to set up the camera because he was concerned about someone breaking into his classroom and stealing materials.
Prosecutors Tom Carroll and Roy Nelson wrote in court motions that the presence of the video camera was reported to the school's assistant principal.
"The following day, a sign was posted in the teacher's lounge which stated that the defendant had been testing home-surveillance equipment," the court records said.
The court records do not indicate that the police were called.
Also, prosecutors wrote of a late 1990s arrest of Zana.
Nelson wrote that Zana was supervising a girl, approximately 7 years old, in the Safekey after-school program when the child asked Zana for a piece of candy.
"The defendant took a Jolly Rancher out of the candy dish, put the piece of candy in his left front pocket, and (the girl) put her hand in his front pocket to take the candy out," the court records said.
The girl told her parents about the incident that evening, and they called the police.
"The defendant was charged with a crime in Henderson Justice Court," the court records said.
"However, on the day of the preliminary hearing, (the child's) family consulted with the prosecutor and elected to not have the (child) testify," Nelson wrote. "The case was dismissed, and records from the case have been sealed."
Another potential witness, Mark Barita, was a teacher at Kesterson while Zana was there, and Barita has told authorities he was suspicious of Zana.
"Barita expressed concerns about the defendant's touching and interaction with students to the school's administration," court records said.
The court records do not indicate whether police were called.
Also, the Review-Journal previously reported how Zana was arrested in 1992 in Pennsylvania, when he was 25.
Zana was charged with forcing a 13-year-old girl onto a bed and feeling her breast.
The case was negotiated and dismissed and did not show up on a criminal background check when Zana was hired in Clark County.
Zana's lawyer, Vince Consul, who handled the sealing of the 1998 case, did not respond to two requests for comment on this story.
From 2000 to 2002, 14 Clark County School District employees, most of them teachers, were arrested on charges of sexual misconduct involving teens or children.
Find this article at:
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Jul-04-Tue-2006/news/8313672.html
District Judge Jackie Glass on Tuesday indefinitely postponed the sentencing of former Kesterson Elementary School teacher Mark Zana to allow for further investigation of accusations of juror misconduct.
After the Aug. 13 verdict, one juror told the judge's staff that another member of the jury had researched Zana on the Internet during the trial.
During a trial, jurors are forbidden from receiving any information about the case they're considering other than what they get in the courtroom and judges constantly remind them of that restriction throughout each trial. The prohibition is intended to protect jurors' deliberations from being tainted.
Zana's defense attorney Tom Pitaro, who has filed a motion for a new trial, said, "There's no doubt in my mind that he (the juror) Googled Zana."
He asked Glass to subpoena the juror's computer to determine what Internet sites he viewed during the trial, noting that the media's ongoing coverage was online at the time.
"I'm not seizing any computer," Glass told Pitaro and prosecutor Tom Carroll. "I think it will be sufficient to bring in those 12 jurors."
The judge said she intended to question each juror separately about the allegations, after which she'll consider Pitaro's motion for a new trial.
To "maintain the integrity of the process," Glass ordered the names of the jurors involved to be kept secret and the sealing of any court documents that contain those names. She also ordered that attorneys refrain from contacting the jurors until the investigation is finished.
The jury found Zana, 40, guilty of open and gross lewdness and three counts of lewdness with a minor.
The lewdness with a minor convictions stem from separate incidents during which Zana put his hand down the shirts of two former students and touched their breasts. The open and gross lewdness count, a lesser charge, was for encouraging a student to dig in his pockets for candy.
Zana also was found guilty of six felony counts of possession of child pornography, which police found on his personal computers. He was acquitted of six other similar counts.
He faces three potential life sentences for the lewdness with a minor convictions, but lesser punishments are an option.
The open and gross lewdness conviction is punishable by up to a year in jail. He also faces one to six years for each possession of child pornography conviction.
Sep. 12, 2007
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Teacher may receive new trial
Judge to review claim of juror misconduct
By K.C. HOWARD
REVIEW-JOURNAL
The former Clark County School District teacher convicted last month of sexually abusing three of his students could receive a new trial.
District Judge Jackie Glass on Tuesday indefinitely postponed the sentencing of former Kesterson Elementary School teacher Mark Zana to allow for further investigation of accusations of juror misconduct.
After the Aug. 13 verdict, one juror told the judge's staff that another member of the jury had researched Zana on the Internet during the trial.
During a trial, jurors are forbidden from receiving any information about the case they're considering other than what they get in the courtroom and judges constantly remind them of that restriction throughout each trial. The prohibition is intended to protect jurors' deliberations from being tainted.
Zana's defense attorney Tom Pitaro, who has filed a motion for a new trial, said, "There's no doubt in my mind that he (the juror) Googled Zana."
He asked Glass to subpoena the juror's computer to determine what Internet sites he viewed during the trial, noting that the media's ongoing coverage was online at the time.
"I'm not seizing any computer," Glass told Pitaro and prosecutor Tom Carroll. "I think it will be sufficient to bring in those 12 jurors."
The judge said she intended to question each juror separately about the allegations, after which she'll consider Pitaro's motion for a new trial.
To "maintain the integrity of the process," Glass ordered the names of the jurors involved to be kept secret and the sealing of any court documents that contain those names. She also ordered that attorneys refrain from contacting the jurors until the investigation is finished.
The jury found Zana, 40, guilty of open and gross lewdness and three counts of lewdness with a minor.
The lewdness with a minor convictions stem from separate incidents during which Zana put his hand down the shirts of two former students and touched their breasts. The open and gross lewdness count, a lesser charge, was for encouraging a student to dig in his pockets for candy.
Zana also was found guilty of six felony counts of possession of child pornography, which police found on his personal computers. He was acquitted of six other similar counts.
He faces three potential life sentences for the lewdness with a minor convictions, but lesser punishments are an option.
The open and gross lewdness conviction is punishable by up to a year in jail. He also faces one to six years for each possession of child pornography
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