JACKSON – An Alabama high school football coach is involved in plea negotiations in a child molestation case in Mississippi, federal court records indicate.
Dwight Bowling is being held without bond in Mississippi”s Lafayette County. He faces federal charges and state charges in two Mississippi counties. The charges include fondling, sexual battery and child exploitation. He has pleaded not guilty.
Bowling, the former head football coach at Smithville High School in Monroe County, Miss., is on administrative leave from his post as football coach at Sulligent High School in Sulligent, Ala.
In a court document filed Wednesday, Bowling”s attorney, Christi McCoy, asked for a delay of his March 7 trial because she said attorneys recently received discovery and had started “trial preparation/plea negotiations.”
McCoy did not immediately respond to a call Thursday.
McCoy recently met with representatives from “several jurisdictions in an effort to negotiate a resolution suitable to all involved,” the court document said.
The federal charges Bowling faces are one count of harassing a witness and four counts of coercing a minor into having sex. He faces other charges in Itawamba and Monroe counties in Mississippi.
Prosecutors have said in court records that investigators secretly recorded a conversation in which Bowling encouraged one of the alleged victims to lie about whether they”d had a sexual relationship.
Bowling coached at Smithville High School for 28 years, then retired and took a similar job in Sulligent.
He was arrested Sept. 17 on his way home to Itawamba County from a football game. A 13-year-old boy who was with Bowling at the time of his arrest accused him of improper touching on several occasions, prosecutors say.
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