Marty Small Sr., the mayor of Atlantic City, N.J., was found not guilty on Thursday of every crime he had been charged with in connection with claims of abuse by his teenage daughter.
After a two-week trial, a jury cleared the mayor of aggravated assault, endangering the welfare of a child, making terroristic threats and witness tampering, which stemmed from what prosecutors argued were his efforts to persuade his daughter to lie to cover up abuse she had reported to the authorities.
A conviction on the most serious charges could have resulted in a lengthy prison term and forced the mayor to forfeit his office.
“Thank you, Jesus, thank you, jury,” Mr. Small told news reporters after leaving the courthouse. “I’m not an abusive man.”
“Those jurors in that box — those strangers to me — saw right through this,” he added, calling the prosecution “nonsense.”
Mr. Small, 51, and his wife, La’Quetta Small, the superintendent of public schools in Atlantic City, were indicted in 2024 on child endangerment charges tied to their daughter’s claims of physical and emotional abuse in December 2023 and January 2024.
Mr. Small was accused of using a broom to strike his daughter in the head, causing her to lose consciousness. At other times in the two-month period, he hit her in the legs repeatedly, causing bruising, and threatened to “earth slam” her, prosecutors said.
“We’re not saying there shouldn’t be disagreements in the home,” a prosecutor, Elizabeth Fischer, told jurors Tuesday in a closing statement, “but we’re saying it shouldn’t be met with violence.”
The jury began deliberating late Tuesday. Almost immediately, the panel requested to listen again to a recording, made by Mr. Small’s daughter and her boyfriend, in which the mayor can be heard threatening to slam her to the ground.
Prosecutors had said that the threats were meant to instill terror; Mr. Small’s lawyers argued that they were the warnings of a parent trying to correct the behavior of a child who, in a video also shown to jurors, was prone to extreme agitation when punished.
“A father takes a phone away from his daughter, and that results in the Tasmanian devil coming out,” Mr. Small’s lawyer, Louis M. Barbone, told jurors after replaying footage taken during a separate family conflict.
In New Jersey, corporal punishment that is not considered excessive is legal.
Despite the charges and the specter of a trial, Mr. Small, a Democrat, last month became the first Atlantic City mayor in two decades to be re-elected, beating his Republican challenger by a wide margin.
Under New Jersey law, public officials convicted of any crime in the third degree or higher, including aggravated assault and making terroristic threats, must forfeit their office.
This is the third time that Mr. Small has been tried and found not guilty of criminal charges. In 2006 and in 2011 jurors acquitted Mr. Small of election fraud charges while he was serving on the City Council.
Mr. Small became mayor after the city’s former mayor, Frank Gilliam, pleaded guilty in 2019 to stealing $87,000 from a youth basketball program he had helped start. Mr. Small, who was next in line for the job as president of the City Council, took over that year.
Dr. Small’s trial is scheduled to start next month, but the mayor said that he hoped prosecutors would “do the right thing and just put this whole chapter behind us.”
The mayor’s trial featured hours of testimony from the couple’s daughter, who is now 17.
The mayor also took the stand in his own defense and flatly denied a central claim: that he had struck his daughter with the head of a broom.
Both father and daughter explained that an argument over her attendance at a city function had escalated, leading the teenager to throw laundry detergent at her father. Retreating to her bedroom, she grabbed a butter knife and used it to make stabbing motions before reaching for a broom, Mr. Small testified.
The mayor said he took hold of the broom handle, causing her to fall to the ground and hit her head. She was unconscious for about 10 seconds, he said. She was taken for a medical evaluation three days later, a delay that prosecutors said was evidence of child endangerment.
Both the mayor and his daughter have said that her relationship with a new boyfriend had become a source of tension within the family.
But defense lawyers depicted Mr. Small as a protective, not abusive, parent concerned by sudden changes in his daughter’s behavior and her slipping academic performance.
Mr. Barbone described the girl as manipulative and rebellious and under the spell of a boyfriend who had encouraged her to record her interactions with her parents.
“She is lying,” Mr. Barbone told jurors in a closing statement, noting that the boyfriend and his mother have notified the city and the mayor that they intend to sue for $2 million for unspecified claims.
“She’s a very good actor,” Mr. Barbone added. “How else can you see it?”
Mr. Small said the not-guilty verdict was the first step in repairing his relationship with his daughter, whom he said he still loves and cares for deeply.
“My daughter’s lost right now,” he said on Thursday. “But like I said, when we win this case, we’re going to get things back on track.”
More than three dozen friends, city workers and constituents testified in Mr. Small’s defense, telling jurors that he had a reputation for being both honest and peaceful.
“I have never seen him in a violent nature,” said Alma Johnson, 83, who lives in Atlantic City and has been a longtime community leader. “I think he holds his ground. I think he’s been respectful.”
Mr. Small said the verdict was an important affirmation for Atlantic City, a seaside gambling resort that remains largely under state control as it struggles to combat poverty, homelessness and economic blight.
“The entire Atlantic City was on trial, and this is a win for everyone,” Mr. Small said.
“We can move on as a family and as a community,” he added, “because — make no mistake about it — the great city of Atlantic City had my back.”
Tracey Tully is a reporter for The Times who covers New Jersey, where she has lived for more than 20 years.
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