‘Victory for victims’: Former Decatur pastor guilty of sodomy
Danny Duane Pitts
By David Gambino
For the Enquirer
Outside a Morgan County courtroom on Thursday afternoon, Danny Duane Pitts spoke about God to a small gathering of supporters. They waited together with bated breath for a jury to decide if Pitts was guilty of deviate sexual intercourse with a teenage boy. They didn’t wait long. After roughly two hours of deliberation, a jury found him guilty of second-degree sodomy.
“This was just validation for myself and all the other victims that he has been accused of hurting,” said Matthew Malin, the now-adult victim in the case. “If you’re ever made a victim, don’t stay a victim. Get your justice and get your peace. And that’s what we did today.”
Pitts was arrested in 2021 and charged with first- and second-degree sodomy after the case against him — first reported to police in 2007 — sat cold for years. Jurors found Pitts not guilty of first-degree sodomy, which entails forcible compulsion, and not guilty of lesser included offenses of first- and second-degree sexual abuse.
Before the verdict was read, attorneys traded closing statements in Circuit Judge Charles Elliot’s courtroom. Chief Assistant District Attorney Garrick Vickery represented the state, while Pitts was represented by John Berry and Brandon Little.
Vickery addressed the state’s burden of proof and explained the “forcible compulsion” component of first-degree sodomy as “physical force that overcomes earnest resistance.”
“Is a defendant making a victim bleed — through a sexual encounter — along with a plea for the act to stop enough?” he asked.
The age of the victim at the time of the abuse was disputed between the state and Pitts’ attorneys. The victim initially told a friend that the abuse happened between the ages of 12-16, according to Vickery.
The victim later denied the abuse happened in a phone call because he didn’t want to be shunned by the church, Vickery said.
Vickery also talked about the testimony of another alleged victim who said Pitts had abused him in Tennessee. He said the secondary victim was “groomed in a similar fashion” years later. Pitts took the victim on “bro trips,” according to Vickery, that led to massages, then nudity, then sexual contact.
Berry, in closing, tried to cast doubt on the credibility of Malin’s testimony. In contrast with the younger, all-business Vickery, Berry spoke with an animated, old-world Southern drawl. Here and there he would remove the reading glasses resting on the bridge of his nose, above a white beard, and gesticulate with them.
“What I saw on the stand was a terribly confused young man,” Berry said of the victim. “There was a question among his own family and friends of did something actually happen.”
Berry said the victim got “pissy” on the stand and was evasive when asked about a 2009 plan to sue the church to receive a $750,000 settlement.
“They got people pulling penises out everywhere in this story,” Berry said of testimony regarding sexual abuse at a fireworks stand. He said no DNA or physical evidence corroborated the claim.
Berry told the jury he gave them multiple reasons to have reasonable doubt in the case.
In rebuttal, Vickery became more animated in kind. He said it was “wholly inappropriate” for Berry to ask jurors to imagine themselves in Pitts’ position.
Vickery called Berry’s characterization of the fireworks stand scene “a funny little vignette.”
“I’m sure it was not funny to Matthew,” said Vickery. He also pushed back against the claim that the victim was after money. “The only thing he stands to gain is more trauma and embarrassment. Nobody did anything to help Matthew back in 2007. Don’t make that same mistake.”
When the verdict was read, there were tears on both sides of the gallery. Pitts showed little emotion. One woman placed her head in her hands and audibly sobbed.
“You are remanded to the custody of the Morgan County sheriff,” Elliott told Pitts. He told Pitts his bond was revoked until a sentencing hearing on Dec. 11, and he must register as a sex offender. “You can take him into custody now.”
Pitts was escorted out of the courtroom by the bailiff and handcuffed out of sight. He was then placed in the back of a Sheriff’s Office cruiser and taken to the Morgan County Jail.
Afterward, Vickery said he was pleased for the victim and his family.
“There are no winners, really, with a case like this, because he was a victim in what happened to him,” he said. “But it is a victory for victims who stick with the system, even when it goes slowly.”
Vickery praised the work of the Hartselle police Capt. Alan McDearmond and former investigator Amy Crouch. He said he plans to argue “for as long a sentence as we can get” at the December hearing. Pitts faces a maximum punishment of 20 years in prison, and he’s facing similar charges in Tennessee, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
Berry and Little declined comment after the verdict.
