[2/11/04]A Warren County man serving a 15-year sentence for molestation will have to wait another month to learn if the state Supreme Court agrees that his conviction should be reversed.

The justices granted themselves an extension until March 19 to consider the 2000 jury verdict against Raymond Helton Friley Jr., 36.

The state’s court of appeals voted to reverse Friley’s conviction in 2003, finding that a jury instruction should not have been given. The attorney general’s office has taken over prosecution and is asking the high court to uphold the verdict.

Friley was convicted of molesting a 9-year-old girl while working on the pool at a grandparent’s home. He was not indicted or charged for five years after the incident.

Grand jurors had returned a sexual battery indictment, but Judge Isadore Patrick agreed to a jury instruction allowing trial jurors to agree on molestation as a “lesser included” offense.

Friley’s attorneys, Jane O’Mara and Pat McNamara, both of Vicksburg, won a 7-3 appeals court decision that proof requirements are different for sexual battery and molestation, meaning the instruction was improper.

“We find that to allow Friley to be convicted of a crime for which he was never charged would create an injustice,” wrote Appeals Judge L. Joseph Lee.

Judge T. Kenneth Griffis disagreed and wrote the dissenting opinion.

“The jury was properly instructed that child fondling/molestation is a lesser-included offense to sexual battery,” he wrote. The instruction Patrick gave simply provided “for progressive punishment for progressively worse crimes,” he added.

Fifteen years is the maximum sentence for molestation.

If the Supreme Court upholds the reversal, Friley could face a new trial.