Former Sky View High School football players involved in the hazing of Brian Seamons took the stand Thursday in federal court, saying the incident happened in part to put their teammate "in his place."
Seamons was a reserve quarterback at the Smithfield school in 1993 when his teammates taped him naked to a towel rack in a locker room during a school dance and paraded his date in front of him.
Seamons is not suing the boys he said "assaulted" him but instead the Cache County School District and football coach Douglas Snow, saying the school officials violated his constitutional rights when they tried to make him apologize for reporting the incident.
James Roe, one of the team's captains, testified he had considered himself one of Seamons' friends, but Seamons had "disrespected" the coach in an earlier game and that was what "lit a fire to put (Seamons) in his place."
Attorneys for the district say school officials were only trying to "mend feelings" between the teammates when several days after the hazing, they encouraged both sides to apologize to each other.
Chris Griffin — another of the team's captains who testified he saw the hazing but did not participate — said he had no recollection of Snow asking Seamons to apologize for reporting what happened. It was another student, not the coach, he said, who suggested Seamons needed to apologize.
Roe and Griffin said all the football players voluntarily signed a written apology a few days after the hazing. But Seamons testified he thought the letter was insincere, since it referred to the hazing as merely a "joke" and it was signed by some players he said weren't in the locker room at the time of the incident.
Former principal Myron Benson took the stand and said Seamons was not dismissed from the team but left voluntarily after a heated conversation between Snow and Seamons' father.
Presentations to the jury, including testimony from Snow, were scheduled to be completed Thursday.
Five men and six women selected from a statewide jury pool will decide the case. One juror, a woman, was dismissed Wednesday after being notified of a family emergency, but both sides in the case agreed the trial could continue with 11 jurors.
The case took more than seven years to come to trial. A federal judge dismissed it twice, but the rulings were overturned. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver said there were enough "material facts in dispute" to entitle Seamons to a trial.
E-mail: mtitze@desnews.com