Former Jubilee Theatre artistic director guilty of child sex assault

A Tarrant County jury deliberated for less than an hour Thursday before convicting a former Fort Worth theater director of sexual assault of a child under 14.

Declois Beacham, 35, could be sentenced to a maximum of 99 years or life in prison. The punishment phase of the trial is scheduled to begin Friday in state District Judge David Hagerman’s court.

Beacham, known professionally as Tre Garrett, was artistic director for the Jubilee Theatre, one of the oldest black theaters in Texas. Beacham has not worked at Jubilee since February 2015, soon after his arrest.

Defense attorneys representing Beacham, who was gaining national acclaim before his arrest on Jan. 30, 2015, argued that police may have made mistakes and that Beacham had insufficient time to commit the crime.

But prosecutors argued that Beacham did not need much time and left DNA on the body of an accuser.

“How’d that get there?” asked prosecutor Eric Nickols. “Magic?”

The chance that DNA matching Beacham’s could have come from another person are 1 in 6.3 quintillion, a number containing 17 zeroes, Nickols said.

“Don’t you know if they could have proved that the police did something wrong, you would have heard it,” Nickols said.

Defense attorneys tried to establish an alibi for Beacham by suggesting that he was at a theater board meeting and later at a nearby Minyard’s store during the time one boy said sexual assault occurred.

However, Ellen Benson, Jubilee Theatre’s board president, testified Thursday that the board meeting on the day in question, Jan 12, 2015, ended at 7:20 p.m. She said she could not account for Beacham’s whereabouts after that.

Beacham’s defense team submitted evidence that his bank card was used at Minyard’s about 8:30 p.m. According to earlier witness testimony, police received the initial 911 call alerting them to the sexual assault about the same time Beacham was at the grocery store.

But the distances between the board meeting, the grocery store and the location of the assault are less than 8 miles and could be driven in heavc traffic in less than 15 minutes, according to prosecutors.

“He cloaks himself in prominence so you never see him coming,” prosecutor Melinda Westmoreland said. “As soon as he leaves that meeting, he drives to that neighborhood and gives oral sex to an 11-year-old boy.

“And then he picks up some chuck roast at the store.”

Defense attorney Cody Cofer called Steven Smith, a Texas A&M University psychology professor, to testify on Thursday. Smith said the photo lineup shown to Beacham’s accusers may have been biased.

Smith said Beacham was pictured smiling and his head nearly filled the entire picture frame, but other faces in the photo spread were not smiling and were not as prominent. Beacham’s picture would have stood out to people because it was different, Smith said.

In more than 70 percent of more than recent 300 conviction exonerations based on new DNA evidence, the original conviction was due to faulty eyewitness identifications, Smith said.

“That’s referred to as a biased photo spread,” Smith said. “It’s a photo that makes people more likely to pick out the one that is different.”

The testimony apparently did not sway the jury.

“There’s no way around the DNA,” Westmoreland said.

According to an arrest warrant affidavit, initially three young males implicated Beacham in multiple sexual assaults.

A 17-year-old told Fort Worth police that on Jan. 9 a man with a goatee driving a gray BMW approached him and asked if he knew anyone who would engage in oral sex for $100, the affidavit said. The teen told police that he ran away after the man showed him the money.

On Jan. 12, 2015, a man in a BMW drove up beside two boys, 10 and 11, and asked if they wanted to make $100. The boys said Beacham showed them cash and asked them to get into his car. The younger boy declined and later told his mother what had happened. The boy’s mother called 911.

When officers questioned him later, the 11-year-old gave police five $20 bills and said he got them from a the man he picked out of the photo lineup — Beacham.

This report includes material from the Star-Telegram archives

This story was originally published May 12, 2016 at 9:31 PM with the headline "Former Jubilee Theatre artistic director guilty of child sex assault."