Brian Calhoun, former Fresno City College instructor, will be sentenced on Nov. 22 at the Fresno County Superior Court for his Oct. 18 conviction on misdemeanor battery of a female student on March 22.

Calhoun clamped his eyes shut as the jury read his verdict, which, despite the monthlong trial process, took the jury one hour to come back with the guilty verdict.

After the verdict was read, Roger Nuttall, Calhoun’s attorney, asked that the jury be polled. Judge Denise Whitehead asked all 12 jurors one-by-one, “Is this your verdict?” Calhoun’s eyes remained closed and every juror replied, “Yes, your honor.”

Nuttall later told Fresno Bee reporter Pablo Lopez, “He [Calhoun] honestly believes he did not commit a crime … Frankly, I thought it was going to be a quick acquittal.”

Calhoun’s conviction carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail. The prosecution declined to comment on the the punishment his office will seek for Calhoun.

Earlier on Oct. 18, both Nuttall and prosecuting attorney Mike Brummell gave closing arguments. Brummell talked for about an hour; Nuttall spoke for two.

Brummell went over the series of events that took place on March 22, and recounted the many witness statements that confirmed the story of Calhoun attacking the victim maliciously.

Nuttall tried to paint the victim, FCC student and Rampage staff member Kevynn Gomez, as a “thug” that wanted to humiliate and degrade Calhoun because of his age and her chronic lack of respect for men.

“True to the epoch of the thug culture … I can say anything I want, anything I want to this old man,” Nuttall said speculating on Gomez’s mindset.

Nuttall spoke about Calhoun’s childhood and the legacy he inherited from his parents.

“We’re proud of you, beloved son, we know the kind of person you are,” Nuttall said. “And we know that if you maintain your life with a context of respect for other human beings and respect for civility; if you work hard, and become the educator you always wanted to be, you will be fruitful.”

Nuttall spoke of anarchy and chaos if students could disrespect instructors. He also tried to convince the jury that they should find in favor of Calhoun and against those who shun traditional ways.

“It didn’t used to be this way; If I’d said, to Brian Calhoun, what Kevynn Gomez said that day, I’d figure I’d be expelled,” he said. “Your verdict in this case is going to send a clear message to every instructor at Fresno City College that they really don’t matter anymore … your verdict to find Mr. Calhoun guilty, means the monkeys will run the zoo.”

Most of Nuttall’s closing arguments steered clear of the altercation between Gomez and Calhoun. Instead, he chose to attack a society that has changed to have distinguished or older men “resented or vilified” by today’s youth saying that they’ve become disrespectful toward their elders.

After Nuttall was finished, Brummell had the opportunity to rebut Nuttall’s words.

“They called her a thug, said she lives a thug life,” Brummell said. “Ms. Gomez is a brave young woman who stood up to a bully.”

While Calhoun was testifying, he claimed that two men were standing next to Gomez with their fists aggressively raised, taunting him saying “what’s your name?”

Brummell spoke of witness testimony.

Brummell said that Cori Murphy, one of the prosecutor’s witnesses, didn’t see two aggressive men threaten Calhoun as [Calhoun] said on the stand. Murphy said she saw “one young boy” say something to Calhoun.

Calhoun was on trial because of an altercation in the OAB at FCC on March 22, the last day of classes before the spring break. According to eyewitness accounts, students in a Chicano Latino studies class were taking their midterm exam late in the class period because a substitute instructor had difficulty locating the tests.

Many of the students in the class had not completed their tests when Calhoun walked in and demanded the class vacate the room because it was his “time to use the class.”

Various witnesses described Calhoun as “angry,” “irritated” and “upset” as he ordered the substitute teacher and his students to leave the room so his class could start.

As Gomez exited, she walked past Calhoun, uttered the words “piss off a–hole” and continued walking out of the room.

Calhoun followed Gomez out of the room and began asking for her name in a loud voice. When she refused to give him her name, Calhoun grabbed her arm and pinned her up against the wall, according to many of the witnesses in the trial.

Witnesses also stated that Calhoun pinned Gomez up to the wall with his right forearm across her chest.

“His arm was across her upper chest,” said Murphy, a student in Calhoun’s education class. “She was pinned up against the wall pretty forcefully.”

Witnesses also agree that Gomez punched Calhoun in the face several times as she struggled to free herself from him; he asked her name repeatedly while she told him to let her go.

Throughout the trial, Nuttall, Calhoun’s attorney, repeatedly mentioned that Gomez never gave Calhoun her name as he requested.

In his opening statements, Nuttall said that Calhoun was simply looking for Gomez’s name in order to file a “disruptive student report.” Nuttall repeated the same claim in his motion for a judgement of acquittal and several times during the questioning of witnesses.

The majority of the student witnesses used the word “slam” to describe the way Calhoun grabbed and dropped Gomez during the incident.

The witnesses all agreed that after the alleged “bodyslam,” several students began to intervene to get Gomez away from Calhoun.

Fallout from the incident included Calhoun being placed on administrative leave and then, a few months later, being fired from his job as an FCC instructor.

The trial officially began on Oct. 1, after being delayed from Sept. 25, and lasted until Oct. 18.

Many of the witnesses agreed on multiple points in their testimony including where Calhoun was standing when he first entered the still occupied classroom, where Gomez uttered the insults at Calhoun, the words she directed at him and where Calhoun confronted Gomez and initially grabbed her in the hall.

Gomez herself testified midway through the trial, on Oct. 9, giving a tearful account of the events on that day in March.

“I was trying to get away,” Gomez said, bursting into tears while recounting the incident to the prosecutor.

Calhoun’s face remained impassive throughout the students’ testimony and made movements only when writing notes or whispering to his attorney.

Calhoun took the stand in his own defense on Oct. 16. He told the jury that he was simply trying to get Gomez’s name to file a report.

“What I wanted her to do was to stop and give me her name … if she walked away she couldn’t give me her name,” Calhoun said on the stand.

At one point, Calhoun stood in the middle of the courtroom and demonstrated how he handled Gomez in the altercation. He put his arms out and showed how he brought Gomez’s arms to her sides so she would stop hitting him, and then said he laid her on the ground in an attempt to halt the altercation.

Calhoun also spoke of his long history as an instructor throughout his testimony and said that he loved his students; Calhoun was an instructor at FCC for 25 years.

When the jury got the case, there were four possible opportunities to find Calhoun guilty of battery: grabbing her arm; pushing her into the wall and restraining her; dragging her across the hallway; and throwing her to the ground.

A unanimous jury reached a verdict in less than an hour. An anonymous juror told the Fresno Bee following the trial, “It was pretty clear-cut. We only had to find him guilty of one, but I would have found him guilty of all four.”