justice - Bad Sporters https://www.badsporters.com News Blogging About Athletes Being Caught Up Mon, 08 Jun 2020 00:07:26 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 ‘We want change. We want justice.’ Giannis Antetokounmpo, Sterling Brown and other Bucks players join Milwaukee protest – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel https://www.badsporters.com/2020/06/08/we-want-change-we-want-justice-giannis-antetokounmpo-sterling-brown-and-other-bucks-players-join-milwaukee-protest-milwaukee-journal-sentinel/ https://www.badsporters.com/2020/06/08/we-want-change-we-want-justice-giannis-antetokounmpo-sterling-brown-and-other-bucks-players-join-milwaukee-protest-milwaukee-journal-sentinel/#respond Mon, 08 Jun 2020 00:07:26 +0000 https://badsporters.com/?p=7014 CLOSE Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo and teammates marched with a group protesting racial injustice in Milwaukee. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel The protest marches in Milwaukee added some star power on Saturday evening. Several Milwaukee Bucks players, including reigning NBA most valuable player Giannis Antetokounmpo, joined local activist Frank Nitty as protesters marched down 27th Street. […]

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Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo and teammates marched with a group protesting racial injustice in Milwaukee.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The protest marches in Milwaukee added some star power on Saturday evening.

Several Milwaukee Bucks players, including reigning NBA most valuable player Giannis Antetokounmpo, joined local activist Frank Nitty as protesters marched down 27th Street.

Antetokounmpo was joined by Bucks teammates Sterling Brown, Donte DiVincenzo, Brook Lopez, two-way player Frank Mason II and Thanasis Antetokounmpo, Giannis’ brother.

The group wore identical gray T-shirts with the slogan “I can’t breathe” printed on the front. All the players wore masks and gloves due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The Bucks players met the marchers as they crossed the 27th St. Bridge over Interstate 94. They arrived in U-Haul vans and handed out beverages and snacks.

Giannis’ girlfriend, Mariah Riddlesprigger, and their young son, Liam, also made an appearance.

In the below video, Antetokounmpo begins to speak about 30 minutes in.

Protest 3 day 9✊?✊?✊?✊?

Posted by Frank Nitty II on Saturday, June 6, 2020

“This is our city, man,” Antetokounmpo said. “We got to come out here and support.”

The crowd roared its approval. 

“We want change, we want justice, and that’s why we’re out here,” Antetokounmpo said. “That’s what we’re going to do today. That’s why I’m going to march with you.

“I want my kid to grow up here in Milwaukee, and not to be scared to walk in the streets. I don’t want my kid to have hate in his heart.”

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Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo and some of his teammates march with a group protesting racial injustice on Saturday, June 6, near North 27th Street and West Wisconsin Avenue in Milwaukee. The group they were with joined a larger group led by activist Frank Nitty and continued their march. (Photo: Mark Hoffman / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

The players then marched behind Nitty.

Brown’s participation in the march is particularly poignant. In January 2018, a group of Milwaukee Police Department officers took Brown to the ground, tased and arrested him after a parking violation at a Walgreens, prompting an internal investigation that ended with several officers suspended and others retrained. Brown was not charged in the incident. 

Brown has filed a lawsuit against the city. He rejected a $400,000 settlement offer.

The Bucks haven’t played since early March when the coronavirus prompted the suspension of the NBA season. On Friday, the NBA players approved a plan to return to action in late July at Disney World in Orlando.

RELATED: ‘I’m just like you:’ Former Bucks player Jabari Parker joins protests in Milwaukee

Contact Ben Steele at (414) 224-2676 or bmsteele@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BenSteeleMJS or Instagram at @bensteele_mjs

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]]> https://www.badsporters.com/2020/06/08/we-want-change-we-want-justice-giannis-antetokounmpo-sterling-brown-and-other-bucks-players-join-milwaukee-protest-milwaukee-journal-sentinel/feed/ 0 7014 The NBA's return brings with it a leadership opportunity in the social justice movement https://www.badsporters.com/2020/06/06/the-nbas-return-brings-with-it-a-leadership-opportunity-in-the-social-justice-movement/ https://www.badsporters.com/2020/06/06/the-nbas-return-brings-with-it-a-leadership-opportunity-in-the-social-justice-movement/#respond Sat, 06 Jun 2020 11:11:12 +0000 https://badsporters.com/?p=6964 Basketball has never felt less essential. Worldwide protests against racial injustice and police brutality have pushed a global pandemic below the fold, and yet the NBA is moving toward resuming its 2019-20 season. There was a time we hoped the league could provide a welcome distraction for Americans quarantined and isolated because of the coronavirus. […]

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Basketball has never felt less essential. Worldwide protests against racial injustice and police brutality have pushed a global pandemic below the fold, and yet the NBA is moving toward resuming its 2019-20 season.

There was a time we hoped the league could provide a welcome distraction for Americans quarantined and isolated because of the coronavirus. That time has passed. We should no longer welcome any distraction from the movement currently spreading across the country. All eyes should be focused on a broken system.

“Everything going on right now, basketball is not important,” Los Angeles Clippers guard Patrick Beverley tweeted on Wednesday, surely echoing the thoughts of many of his colleagues who have joined protests and spoken out in the wake of George Floyd’s homicide in custody of the Minneapolis Police Department.

I had my reservations about the NBA returning in the midst of a pandemic, so sports seem even sillier now, but basketball is coming back, and I am trying to reconcile with that, because I write about basketball. Here is where I have landed: The league has a chance to dominate this conversation in the next five months, and seizing that opportunity could carry the current movement forward in a way that creates a lasting impact.

Former NBA player Stephen Jackson (right), a friend of George Floyd’s, poses for a photograph at a memorial for Floyd on Wednesday. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

When the NBA returns at the Walt Disney World Resort next month, players and coaches will have a massive audience as the faces of the most popular North American sport resuming games this summer. Among the four major North American sports leagues, the NBA has the highest percentage of African-Americans at every level of its organizations — from players to coaching staffs to executives to the league office — by a wide margin.

Three quarters of NBA players are black, according to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, and many have been among the most vocal social justice advocates. Malcolm Brogdon of the Indiana Pacers joined a peaceful protest in Atlanta partially organized by Jaylen Brown of the Boston Celtics on Saturday, and the two rising stars made public pleas to a crowd of thousands in their hometown, a few hundred miles from where a black man, Ahmaud Arbery, was gunned down while jogging last month.

“This is a moment,” Brogdon told protesters. “We have leverage right now. We have a moment in time. People are going to look back, our kids are going to look back at this and say, ‘You were part of that.’ I’ve got a grandfather that marched next to Dr. King in the sixties, and he was amazing. He would be proud to see us all here. We got to keep pushing forward. Jaylen has led this charge, man, and I’m proud of him. We need more leaders.”

Former NBA player turned popular broadcaster Stephen Jackson was a close friend of Floyd’s. He was seen in recent days holding Floyd’s young daughter on his shoulders as she told onlookers, “Daddy changed the world.” Flanked by All-Star center Karl-Anthony Towns and other Minnesota Timberwolves, Jackson spoke passionately from a justice rally in Minneapolis’ Government Center Plaza last week.

“When was murder ever worth it?” he said, referencing Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer since charged with Floyd’s murder. “But if it’s a black man, it’s approved. You can’t tell me when that man had his knee on my brother’s neck, taking his life away with his hand in his pocket, that that smirk on his face didn’t say, ‘I’m protecting.’”

NBA players have been increasingly vocal about racial injustice in the years since LeBron James tweeted a photo of his Miami Heat donning hooded sweatshirts in honor of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old high school student who was shot and killed by Orlando-area neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman in 2012. James was also among dozens of players to sport “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts in protest of a grand jury opting not to indict New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo for the choking death of Eric Garner in 2014.

LeBron James was among the NBA players who wore “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts in protest of police brutality in 2014. (Rich Kane/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

James has criticized Donald Trump for furthering the racial divide on a number of occasions, notably after the president referred to Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players protesting police brutality as “sons of bitches” and also after he defended “very fine people on both sides” of a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a neo-Nazi drove into a crowd of anti-racism protesters, killing Heather Heyer.

Over the past week, James has pledged support for protests to tens of millions of social media followers.

“I won’t stop until I see change,” James wrote on Thursday.

The audience for James and other NBA players will only increase when they convene to resume the 2019-20 season in Orlando next month, when the league will take center stage on national television. The most predominantly black sports league in America, a league that empowers its players to voice their opinions, will have one of the most powerful voices in the world in the months leading up to the presidential election.

Racism and social justice are not inherently political issues, but they become more so when the president of the United States responds to protests not with a consistent unifying message but by calling Minneapolis protesters “thugs” in a Twitter rant that also suggested, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” when he called on the nation’s governors to “dominate” protesters or risk looking “like a bunch of jerks,” and when he promoted the use of tear gas on peaceful protesters to clear his path for a photo opportunity.

In one breath Trump once suggested Kaepernick and other NFL players peacefully protesting racial injustice during the national anthem should be deported, and in another he said this week, “I am … an ally of all peaceful protesters.” It is clear why Stephen Curry, Steve Kerr and members of the Golden State Warriors repeatedly clashed with Trump over his divisive remarks and why Trump rescinded an offer to visit the White House that was never extended to the champions of the blackest sports league in America.

The NBA also features a number of white men who have pledged their support for social justice and anti-racism efforts and put their face to white privilege. Kyle Korver, a senior member of the Eastern Conference-leading Milwaukee Bucks, penned an essay on the subject for The Players’ Tribune. Kerr and former Detroit Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy joined the Players Coalition in endorsing a letter to Attorney General William Barr last month that called for the arrest of the men who killed Arbery.

Steve Kerr and Gregg Popovich, coaches together on the U.S. men’s national team, have been vocal critics of President Donald Trump. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

“I’ve never met a single black parent that doesn’t have to sit their kids down and talk to them very directly about how you deal with the police if you’re stopped,” Van Gundy told Yahoo Sports in late May. “‘You do this, this and this, so you come home alive.’ I started getting more of that in my career. I’m like holy [expletive]. I’ve never once talked to my kids about that or felt the need to. If my kid got pulled over, it was because they deserved to get pulled over. Even if they mouthed off, nobody was gonna shoot them.”

Kerr hosted San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich this week on his “Flying Coach” podcast with Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll for a conversation about how they, as privileged white men, can engage players of all backgrounds in meaningful conversations and assist the effort to bring about systemic change. Popovich has long been one of the NBA’s most vocal critics of Trump’s leadership.

“The thing that strikes me is that we all see this police violence and racism and we’ve seen it all before but nothing changes,” Popovich told The Nation’s Dave Zirin in a conversation prompted by the oft-private coach. “That’s why these protests have been so explosive. But without leadership and an understanding of what the problem is, there will never be change. And white Americans have avoided reckoning with this problem forever because it’s been our privilege to be able to avoid it. That also has to change.”

Popovich went so far as to call the president “a deranged idiot.” Kerr has called Trump “a blowhard.” Curry called him an asset, “if you remove the et.” James called him a “bum.” The NBA’s voice on this is glaring.

Players and coaches have two months before the season resumes to craft a more effective message to the American public, one that elevates the national conversation from name-calling and attempts by detractors to conflate peaceful protests with looting and the excessive use of force by police with assaults against police officers. There is an opportunity to further a sports activism cause once carried by their predecessors at the 1967 Cleveland Summit, including Bill Russell, who also had a front-row seat as a guest of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington and for whom the NBA’s Finals MVP trophy is named.

The National Basketball Coaches Association recently condemned “police brutality, racial profiling and the weaponization of racism” as “shameful, inhumane and intolerable,” forming a committee to combat social injustices with tangible reform in NBA cities. That is a start. There is a long way to go, but coaches and players can undoubtedly serve as leaders in carrying the momentum of this movement into the most consequential election of many of their lifetimes.

The best reason to welcome the NBA’s return in the face of a pandemic is what might unfold off the court in Orlando during the months before another champion refuses to accept a White House invitation. In that way, basketball might just be essential again.

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Ben Rohrbach is a staff writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach

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]]> https://www.badsporters.com/2020/06/06/the-nbas-return-brings-with-it-a-leadership-opportunity-in-the-social-justice-movement/feed/ 0 6964 Michael Flynn Pleaded Guilty. Why Is The Justice Department Dropping The Charges? https://www.badsporters.com/2020/05/28/michael-flynn-pleaded-guilty-why-is-the-justice-department-dropping-the-charges/ https://www.badsporters.com/2020/05/28/michael-flynn-pleaded-guilty-why-is-the-justice-department-dropping-the-charges/#respond Thu, 28 May 2020 16:17:44 +0000 https://badsporters.com/?p=6692 The Justice Department is dropping charges against Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser. Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP hide caption toggle caption Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP The Justice Department is dropping charges against Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser. Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Why is the government seeking to drop charges against Michael Flynn even […]

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The Justice Department is dropping charges against Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser.

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP


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The Justice Department is dropping charges against Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser.

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Why is the government seeking to drop charges against Michael Flynn even though he pleaded guilty — in two admissions in court — to committing the crime at issue?

The short answers: The Justice Department is giving him a break. And Flynn has played his cards well.

The long answer: It’s a long story.

The deal

Flynn admitted to lying to the FBI about conversations he had had with Russia’s then-ambassador to the United States as he and the rest of President-elect Donald Trump’s camp waited in the wings early in 2017.

That case appeared clear. But the former Army lieutenant general also had been involved with other enterprises that might have resulted in more charges — including undisclosed foreign lobbying — and his deal with prosecutors swept that off the table.

It also apparently avoided prospective charges for Flynn’s son. Flynn and his attorneys considered the deal to be the least bad way out of the jam.

“My guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with the special counsel’s office reflect a decision I made in the best interests of my family and of our country. I accept full responsibility for my actions,” Flynn said in late 2017 at the time of his plea.

All the same, few knew at the time of that submission how problematic Flynn’s fateful interview with the FBI would be for nearly everyone else involved, including the specific FBI agents, the leadership of the bureau and the Justice Department.

The conversation

Former FBI Director James Comey since has described the question about whether Flynn had lied, or whether to charge him, as “a close one.”

U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea quoted that statement in his brief about the Flynn case filed Thursday to seek the dismissal of the charges, along with the notes of the FBI agents that also have since come to light.

In those materials, the investigators appear to wonder what they’re doing preparing to interview Flynn.

“What is our goal — truth, admission or to get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” one note read. Another says: “[White House] will be furious” and “protect our institution by not playing games.”

Flynn’s attorneys fought to get this material unsealed after their dealings with the government soured. They call it the basis for their claim that the FBI effectively entrapped him.

The Justice Department’s new brief cites these materials and argues that the bureau had all but concluded that Flynn wasn’t a counterintelligence risk as it was looking into prospective links between Trump’s camp and the Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In this new reasoning, Flynn’s false statements to investigators weren’t ‘”material’ to any bona fide investigation,” Shea wrote — so the case shouldn’t continue.

What about the guilty pleas?

Attorney General William Barr was clear in an interview with CBS News on Thursday evening: “People sometimes plead to things that turn out not to be crimes, and the Department of Justice is not persuaded that this was material to any legitimate counterintelligence investigation. So it was not a crime.”

Change in the weather

Also unknown to the public at the time of Flynn’s interview were the disputes about it taking place within and between the FBI and the Justice Department.

The procedures — or lack thereof — that were followed then helped create the opening for the new legal interpretation by Barr that the Flynn case was improper.

Comey’s fingerprints and those of other former bureau leaders were all over the decisions made about what to do and whom to tell and not tell about Flynn’s interview. Those names are now mud with most Republicans, and that, separate from the legal interpretations, make the politics safe within the GOP for Trump and Barr to let Flynn go.

Democrats argue that Trump and Barr have made a mockery of what was intended to be an independent Justice Department, first with the intercession in the sentencing of Trump’s friend Roger Stone and now with Flynn.

The player

Through all this, Flynn and his attorneys sought the best deal they could get at each juncture. First, they turned state’s evidence.

Intitially, prosecutors called him a model cooperator and told a judge they would be fine if he received a sentence of only probation, even though federal guidelines contemplated at least a few months in prison.

The longer Flynn cooperated, however, the more fraught became his relationship with the feds. After giving prosecutors everything they wanted in the Russia matter, Flynn became less forthcoming when the government brought a case against his former business partner, prosecutors said.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Washington D.C., which took the prosecutorial baton from special counsel Robert Mueller’s office, told a judge that it thought Flynn should be sentenced to as many as six months.

That could include probation, it said — but didn’t rule out the prospect of prison time, given how much less helpful prosecutors said Flynn had become.

By this point, in mid-2019, Flynn had changed out his legal team, and it howled at the prospect of prison after all the work he had done for the Justice Department.

That “stunning and vindictive reversal,” as Flynn’s lawyers called it, was one basis for their request to withdraw the guilty plea earlier this year, notwithstanding Flynn’s admission of guilt and months of cooperation.

It also fueled their quest to obtain more of the core documents about Flynn’s interview, which revealed the notes from the FBI investigators.

The sentencing that wasn’t

In a strange twist, what might have set the stage for Flynn’s eventual release was an encounter with an outspoken judge who raised the prospect of punishing him more severely.

Nearly everyone, including Trump, expected Flynn to be sentenced in late 2018 when he appeared before Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington. Flynn and prosecutors invited family members to be with them in court.

But the judge yielded surprises and headlines with his spirited remarks about the case.

“I’m not hiding my disgust, my disdain, for this criminal offense,” he said.

Sullivan asked prosecutors whether Flynn might have committed “treason,” raising the prospect that Flynn might get prison time after all. No, the government said, it didn’t consider that part of the case.

Ultimately, Sullivan deferred the sentencing because he said he had more questions about the matter, adding more months to Flynn’s legal saga.

If Sullivan had issued a sentence then and resolved Flynn’s case, Flynn’s admissions and guilt might have stood. His legal odyssey might have ended there.

Instead, the judge’s delay led to the phase of the story in which Flynn replaced his attorneys and broke with the government. His new legal team fought for and obtained the FBI memos and sought to rescind the guilty plea.

That dispute was still ongoing when the Justice Department decided this week to drop the case. In the end, Flynn and his lawyers outlasted everyone.

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]]> https://www.badsporters.com/2020/05/28/michael-flynn-pleaded-guilty-why-is-the-justice-department-dropping-the-charges/feed/ 0 6692 Alleged victims in parking lot brawl with Eastside Catholic athletes say cops, prosecutors denied them justice https://www.badsporters.com/2020/05/09/alleged-victims-in-parking-lot-brawl-with-eastside-catholic-athletes-say-cops-prosecutors-denied-them-justice/ https://www.badsporters.com/2020/05/09/alleged-victims-in-parking-lot-brawl-with-eastside-catholic-athletes-say-cops-prosecutors-denied-them-justice/#respond Sat, 09 May 2020 00:31:25 +0000 https://badsporters.com/?p=6002 E-mails reveal there wasn’t a months-long delay in reporting a crime, but actually a months-long delay in police responding to the teens who wished to press charges. SAMMAMISH, Wash.— Two teenagers who accused four football players from Eastlake and Eastside Catholic high schools of violently assaulting them in an August 2019 parking lot brawl that […]

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E-mails reveal there wasn’t a months-long delay in reporting a crime, but actually a months-long delay in police responding to the teens who wished to press charges.

SAMMAMISH, Wash.— Two teenagers who accused four football players from Eastlake and Eastside Catholic high schools of violently assaulting them in an August 2019 parking lot brawl that was captured on video claim police and prosecutors denied them justice.

Rico Martinez and Matt Boczar, two of three alleged victims, said they were disappointed to learn the King County Prosecutor’s Office declined to charge anyone, and a prosecutor for the City of Sammamish dropped a charge of misdemeanor assault filed against one Eastside Catholic player earlier this year. Martinez and Boczar, who were both Issaquah High School students at the time of the Sammamish physical altercation, said prosecutors based their decision on incomplete information they received from police.

“I feel like (the football players) should have got charged because what they did was completely wrong,” said Boczar, who was 17 at the time of the August 23, 2019 brawl.  

The city and county prosecuting attorneys on the case each cited several reasons for declining charges, including a lack of evidence, inconsistent information and uncertainty over whether the alleged victims and the suspects acted aggressively in the form of “mutual combat” or “self defense.”

King County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Michelle Larson also noted in her decision that there were questions about the alleged victims’ credibility. The case was hampered, she said, because they did not come forward right after the fight. She stated there was a “three-month delay in reporting,” adding that the alleged victims “weren’t willing to cooperate,” so “police couldn’t investigate” until three months later, according to records obtained from the prosecutor’s office. 

“It makes me very angry. It wasn’t fair,” said Martinez, who was 18 at the time of the altercation. “We were willing to cooperate right away. It is wrong to say we wouldn’t cooperate. We were telling the truth.”

KING 5 obtained emails which reveal there wasn’t a months-long delay in reporting the crime, but actually a months-long delay in police responding to the teens, who wished to press charges right away. 

Four days after the physical altercation, on August 27, Boczar’s father met a King County Sheriff’s Office detective and provided copies of videos of the fight, according to e-mails the parent shared with KING 5. The dad informed the detective that his son and Martinez wanted to press charges against the Eastside Catholic and Eastlake High School athletes. But, e-mails show, police didn’t follow up with the family or interview the alleged victims who sought to press charges until two months later. The father e-mailed police officers about the case 18 times between August 27 and October 13 ⁠— the date a deputy finally arranged to meet with the teens to take their statements and launch an investigation, according to two email threads between the father and members of law enforcement.  

“I believe them delaying it, it was a poorly done job,” said Martinez, who was 18 at the time of the alleged assault. 

The King County Sheriff’s Office did not include information in its police report about the Boczar family reporting the crime and sharing videos of the incident right after it happened.   

Sgt. Ryan Abbott, a public information officer for the  King County Sheriff’s Office, didn’t explain why detectives who worked on the case failed to document the actual date the parent provided the videos to police and informed deputies of Martinez and Boczar’s intent to press charges. He said that detectives must prioritize their cases, and they completed this investigation with plenty of time to spare before the statute of limitations for felony assault expires.

“Your question seems to assume that because of the number of times the parent e-mailed us, meant no work was being done. Detectives investigate multiple cases at the same time and receive many e-mails. We could have done much better in communicating with this parent,” Abbott said.

‘He Was Coming At Me In A Very Aggressive Way’ 

When Boczar and Martinez finally met with police in October 2019, the two alleged victims again shared the videos of the brawl, and they told a deputy that three Eastside Catholic football players and another football player from Eastlake High School physically attacked them and a third teenager in the parking lot of a Sammamish Safeway. Fifty to 75 juveniles clustered around the brawl and a handful of concerned bystanders called 911, according to police records and 911 audio recordings. 

The teens said a star Eastlake High School player initiated the fight because the player was upset they’d disrespected someone in his family. 

“He was coming at me in a very aggressive way,” said Boczar, adding that he decided to speak out about that night because he doesn’t want the students who fought him to get a pass because of their status as star athletes. “It was scary because all of a sudden you look up and it’s like you just see people punching you, kicking you.” 

Cell phone videos, obtained by KING 5, show a group of males, including Eastside Catholic football players, throwing punches, kicking and stomping on two of the three alleged victims from Issaquah High School while others in the crowd attempt to break up the back-to-back fights. At one point, video shows, the third alleged victim also got violent, punching one of the Eastside Catholic students. Two Eastside Catholic players immediately tackled him to the ground, stomping on his head, torso and throwing punches. 

An attorney for one of the football players investigated in the case said her client wasn’t an aggressor in the fight; he was trying to de-escalate it by pulling one of the alleged victims back. 

The same attorney, plus a parent of another football player involved, criticized the thoroughness of the police investigation, stating police did not interview any of the football players under investigation— only the alleged victims.

The attorney said police also failed to interview enough witnesses. She said there were plenty of students in the crowd who would have confirmed to police that Boczar, Martinez and the third alleged victim all came to the Safeway parking lot looking for a fight. On August 24, 2019, a day after the altercation, Martinez posted a message on Instagram indicating he was ready to fight again. 

“I’m coming for all of you, it’s over,” wrote Martinez in a social media post that did not mention who was the message was meant for. The teen admitted he posted a few inappropriate messages “out of anger,” over what happened in the Safeway parking lot, but he still maintained he and his friends are victims of an assault— not the ones who initiated the fight. 

Sgt. Abbott, the King County Sheriff’s Office public information officer,  said only one witness stayed to talk to police officers on the night of the fight. The other people in the crowd fled the scene and made no attempts to contact police, he said.  

Abbott explained that the detective who worked on the case made attempts to interview everyone who was a suspect in the criminal investigation.  He said one suspect, who was summoned to the police station by a detective, came with his attorney and declined to provide a statement. Another suspect’s mother “refused” to let detectives speak with her son, Abbot said. He said the detective spoke with the third suspect’s father and learned he was unavailable. The fourth suspects’ mother did not respond when a detective attempted to make contact, Abbott said. 

“The detective also went to the school to make contact with the juveniles, but the school told her they didn’t want to talk at school and would rather talk at a different location but we had difficulty making that happen,” Abbott said. 

An Eastside Catholic spokeswoman said earlier this week that school administrators didn’t know three of their students were suspects in the criminal assault investigation until reporters brought it to their attention this week. A Lake Washington School District spokeswoman said their district was also unaware of the fight or their student’s involvement. 

This is at least the second time in two years that members of the Eastside Catholic’s elite team were suspects in a criminal investigation for allegations of serious crimes, and the private school has faced criticism in the past for failing to hold football players accountable for breaking school rules.  Eastside Catholic never opened an internal investigation when four of its football stars were accused in 2018 of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl in the bed of a moving pickup truck on public roads. 

Casey McNerthey, a spokesman for the King County Prosecutor’s Office, declined an interview request to discuss the lead prosecutor’s decision to decline filing charges. He said she considered multiple factors that led her to reach the decision. In a statement, he applauded the King County Sheriff’s Office’s work on the criminal investigation.

“We commend Sammamish Police on their thorough and fair investigation,” McNerthney said. ”This was not a question of their work, rather the totality of evidence that would be presented in court.”

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]]> https://www.badsporters.com/2020/05/09/alleged-victims-in-parking-lot-brawl-with-eastside-catholic-athletes-say-cops-prosecutors-denied-them-justice/feed/ 0 6002 Did justice prevail in USD football players accused of rape? https://www.badsporters.com/2018/04/15/did-justice-prevail-in-usd-football-players-accused-of-rape-4/ https://www.badsporters.com/2018/04/15/did-justice-prevail-in-usd-football-players-accused-of-rape-4/#respond Sun, 15 Apr 2018 17:34:50 +0000 http://www.badsporters.com/?p=3598 SIOUX FALLS | The thought of someone convicted of illegal sexual contact walking around a college campus is disturbing to rape victim Tara-Claire Whalen. Whalen, a sophomore at the University of South Dakota, was shocked when in October, the heart of football season, two of the school’s players were arrested on rape charges stemming from […]

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SIOUX FALLS | The thought of someone convicted of illegal sexual contact walking around a college campus is disturbing to rape victim Tara-Claire Whalen.

Whalen, a sophomore at the University of South Dakota, was shocked when in October, the heart of football season, two of the school’s players were arrested on rape charges stemming from an incident at an off-campus residence.

What concerns her now is that one of them, who admitted to his involvement and was criminally convicted, is still enrolled.

“It’s terrifying to think someone who should be in jail isn’t and can still be walking around our campus and still has the potential to do this to someone else,” said Whalen, who is part of student organization PAVE: Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment.

Danny Rambo Jr., a USD junior, was charged with second-degree rape after a woman reported being sexually assaulted by him and another student, Dale Williamson Jr., while she was having consensual sex with a different student, who was also a football player. Williamson was charged with attempted rape and has pleaded not guilty.

In November, an arrest warrant for a separate case was issued for Williamson. He was charged with second- and third-degree rape from a March 2017 incident. Williamson is awaiting trial on both cases.

Neither individual is on the football roster, the university confirmed. Williamson is no longer enrolled.

Rambo’s criminal case has closed up: he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and received his sentence in February, leaving some to wonder how a student who admitted to a crime involving sexual contact can remain on campus.

But criminal procedures and college disciplinary processes are separate, and universities are strapped in their ability to respond until their own Title IX investigation can be completed.

USD officials said in October a Title IX investigation was taking place but have not said if it was completed.

“With the exception of interim measures and the general authority to protect the safety and well-being of the campus community, no action is taken against a student accused of violating the Student Code of Conduct until the conduct process is concluded and the student is found to have engaged in prohibited conduct,” South Dakota Board of Regents general counsel Guilherme Costa said in an email.

Rambo is still enrolled at the university and won’t be seeing much jail time, a result that isn’t uncommon locally and nationwide. That’s true even for an incident that was jarring when it was first reported last fall.

The victim and two of her friends joined Williamson, Rambo and another USD football player to watch a movie in his bedroom at an off-campus residence on Oct. 22, according to an affidavit for an arrest warrant.

The victim’s friends left the residence, and Williamson and Rambo exited the room at 10:26 p.m., according to the court document.

The victim texted her friend until 11:06 p.m., when she told her friend that she and the third student were going to have consensual sex, according to the court documents. Rambo and Williamson re-entered the room without the victim’s knowledge.

Rambo, according to court documents, approached the victim without her knowing and penetrated her with his fingers. She stopped him and he left the room. Williamson twice tried to force the victim to give him oral sex, according to the affidavit.

The victim told police that the other player, who is a senior and will graduate, did not seem surprised that Rambo and Williamson entered the room. She also said he did not ask them to leave the room.

The three players were suspended from the football team.

Rambo, 21, was initially charged with second-degree rape. In February, as part of a plea deal, he pleaded guilty to sexual contact without consent with a person capable of consenting, a Class 1 misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of a year in county jail. The charge does not require Rambo to register as a sex offender.

Rape in the second degree is a Class 1 felony, which would have given the judge the opportunity to sentence up to 50 years in prison.

Rambo was sentenced to spend 10 days in the Clay County Jail, starting Nov. 1.

Jason Rumpca, a Beresford lawyer who handled the defense proceedings, declined to comment beyond providing sentencing information.

Clay County State’s Attorney Alexis Tracy said she was unable to comment on Rambo’s case, as it is connected with Williamson’s currently open case. But experts say a drastic drop in sentence parameters and charge level is nothing new in cases involving a sexual crime.

Sexual crime cases hinge upon victim involvement, said Minnehaha County State’s Attorney Aaron McGowan. From identifying the assailant, if possible, to repeatedly providing intricate details to an intimately harrowing experience, the court process can be another barrier to closure.

But softer sentences can also be difficult to grasp.

“It’s rough on victims when it gets (pleaded) down because a lot of them come to us and want justice to be done,” said Michelle Markgraf, director of the Compass Center for sexual assault and domestic violence advocacy in Sioux Falls. “They don’t see that as justice happening.”

Each sexual assault case is unique. Best-case scenarios involve a participating survivor, DNA evidence, physical evidence and witnesses — elements that would give a jury confidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the person being accused of the assault is guilty.

Rape cases are fluid, McGowan said. A victim can change his or her mind halfway through the process and not want to continue the case. There could be no physical evidence to counter a denial from the accused.

For cases where evidence is unavailable and a victim isn’t ready to share in open court, prosecutors often try to get what they can, such as working with the defense to reach a plea deal, which isn’t always satisfying justice.

“Even at the beginning of the process when I’m in the ER with somebody who is reporting a sexual assault and is considering a rape kit, they want to know at that point, am I going to get justice?” Markgraf said. “That’s so tough for me as an advocate because the chances are they won’t get justice just because these cases are hard to prosecute and very rarely do they go to trial.”

Nationally, about 1 in 10 rapists see jail time, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). That number includes the two-thirds of rapes that don’t get reported to law enforcement, according to the same site.

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About 16.5 percent of those charged with rape were convicted, according to a 2009 data analysis on felony defendants from the country’s 75 largest counties from the Bureau of Justice. The majority of those were reached in a plea deal with attorneys rather than a jury trial.

The same trend carries into cases involving a college student.

Former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner was given a six-month sentence but was released after only three for good behavior after a jury found him guilty of multiple felonies from a 2015 assault of an unconscious woman behind a dumpster.

University of Colorado student Austin Wilkerson was convicted by a jury of sexually assaulting a woman in March 2014. Prosecutors said he “isolated and raped the half-conscious victim” after a St. Patrick’s Day celebration, according to The Guardian, after he had told his friends that he was going to take care of her.

He saw no prison time, and instead was ordered two years of “work release” and 20 years to life on probation.

The reality of sentencing in these cases could serve as a barrier to future victims who are considering reporting the offense, Whalen said.

“It’s terrifying that (Rambo) got sentenced to 10 days in jail after admitting he did this to a girl,” the Mobridge native said. “If it would happen to me again, I (wouldn’t) want to tell anyone because they just get a slap on the wrist. I feel like it’s more of a downer on people who would want to report.”

The victim in Rambo and Williamson’s case didn’t report the incident to police, according to court documents. Someone known to the victim reported it to university police.

“The victim was very reluctant about having an investigation started due to the backlash she believed she would suffer from the football team, student population and community,” according to the affidavit.

The fear of backlash hovers over nearly every survivor who walks into the Compass Center, Markgraf said. They’re often told by people in whom they confide that their assailant “would never do this.”

“They’re not believed a lot of the time. We’ve seen it a lot,” Markgraf said.

It’s even more intimidating when the accused has the high profile of an athlete.

ESPN’s Outside the Lines did a five-year look at 10 major college sports programs across the country. It found that the status of an athlete has a “chilling effect” on whether cases were brought to police and how the cases were investigated.

More than 2,000 documents showed that athletes from the 10 schools examined benefited from the “confluence of factors” readily available to many college sports programs, such as quick access to high-profile attorneys and intimidation felt by witnesses to take on a well-known accuser.

“Numerous cases never resulted in charges because accusers and witnesses were afraid to detail wrongdoing, feared harassment from fans and the media, or were pressured to drop charges in the interest of the sports programs,” according to Outside the Lines.

“It’s surprising to think that anyone would do this, and athletes are held to a higher standard than most,” Whalen said. “It was crazy to think that they would risk everything for what they thought was fun.”

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The post Did justice prevail in USD football players accused of rape? first appeared on Bad Sporters.

]]> https://www.badsporters.com/2018/04/15/did-justice-prevail-in-usd-football-players-accused-of-rape-4/feed/ 0 3598 Did justice prevail in USD football players accused of rape? https://www.badsporters.com/2018/04/14/did-justice-prevail-in-usd-football-players-accused-of-rape-3/ https://www.badsporters.com/2018/04/14/did-justice-prevail-in-usd-football-players-accused-of-rape-3/#respond Sat, 14 Apr 2018 15:09:54 +0000 http://www.badsporters.com/?p=3590 The thought of someone convicted of illegal sexual contact walking around a college campus is disturbing to rape victim Tara-Claire Whalen. Whalen, a sophomore at the University of South Dakota, was shocked when in October, the heart of football season, two of the school’s players were arrested on rape charges stemming from an incident at […]

The post Did justice prevail in USD football players accused of rape? first appeared on Bad Sporters.

]]>

The thought of someone convicted of illegal sexual contact walking around a college campus is disturbing to rape victim Tara-Claire Whalen.

Whalen, a sophomore at the University of South Dakota, was shocked when in October, the heart of football season, two of the school’s players were arrested on rape charges stemming from an incident at an off-campus residence.

What concerns her now is that one of them, who admitted to his involvement and was criminally convicted, is still enrolled.

“It’s terrifying to think someone who should be in jail isn’t and can still be walking around our campus and still has the potential to do this to someone else,” said Whalen, who is part of student organization PAVE: Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment.

The Argus Leader reports Danny Rambo Jr., a USD junior, was charged with second-degree rape after a woman reported being sexually assaulted by him and another student, Dale Williamson Jr., while she was having consensual sex with a different student, who was also a football player. Williamson was charged with attempted rape and has pleaded not guilty.

In November, an arrest warrant for a separate case was issued for Williamson. He was charged with second- and third-degree rape from a March 2017 incident. Williamson is awaiting trial on both cases.

Neither individual is on the football roster, the university confirmed. Williamson is no longer enrolled.

Rambo’s criminal case has closed up: he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and received his sentence in February, leaving some to wonder how a student who admitted to a crime involving sexual contact can remain on campus.

But criminal procedures and college disciplinary processes are separate, and universities are strapped in their ability to respond until their own Title IX investigation can be completed.

USD officials said in October a Title IX investigation was taking place but have not said if it was completed.

“With the exception of interim measures and the general authority to protect the safety and well-being of the campus community, no action is taken against a student accused of violating the Student Code of Conduct until the conduct process is concluded and the student is found to have engaged in prohibited conduct,” South Dakota Board of Regents general counsel Guilherme Costa said in an email.

Rambo is still enrolled at the university and won’t be seeing much jail time, a result that isn’t uncommon locally and nationwide. That’s true even for an incident that was jarring when it was first reported last fall.

The victim and two of her friends joined Williamson, Rambo and another USD football player to watch a movie in his bedroom at an off-campus residence on Oct. 22, according to an affidavit for an arrest warrant.

The victim’s friends left the residence, and Williamson and Rambo exited the room at 10:26 p.m., according to the court document.

The victim texted her friend until 11:06 p.m., when she told her friend that she and the third student were going to have consensual sex, according to the court documents. Rambo and Williamson re-entered the room without the victim’s knowledge.

Rambo, according to court documents, approached the victim without her knowing and penetrated her with his fingers. She stopped him and he left the room. Williamson twice tried to force the victim to give him oral sex, according to the affidavit.

The victim told police that the other player, who is a senior and will graduate, did not seem surprised that Rambo and Williamson entered the room. She also said he did not ask them to leave the room.

The three players were suspended from the football team.

Rambo, 21, was initially charged with second-degree rape. In February, as part of a plea deal, he pleaded guilty to sexual contact without consent with a person capable of consenting, a Class 1 misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of a year in county jail. The charge does not require Rambo to register as a sex offender.

Rape in the second degree is a Class 1 felony, which would have given the judge the opportunity to sentence up to 50 years in prison.

Rambo was sentenced to spend 10 days in the Clay County Jail, starting Nov. 1.

Jason Rumpca, a Beresford lawyer who handled the defense proceedings, declined to comment beyond providing sentencing information.

Clay County State’s Attorney Alexis Tracy said she was unable to comment on Rambo’s case, as it is connected with Williamson’s currently open case. But experts say a drastic drop in sentence parameters and charge level is nothing new in cases involving a sexual crime.

Sexual crime cases hinge upon victim involvement, said Minnehaha County State’s Attorney Aaron McGowan. From identifying the assailant, if possible, to repeatedly providing intricate details to an intimately harrowing experience, the court process can be another barrier to closure.

But softer sentences can also be difficult to grasp.

“It’s rough on victims when it gets (pleaded) down because a lot of them come to us and want justice to be done,” said Michelle Markgraf, director of the Compass Center for sexual assault and domestic violence advocacy in Sioux Falls. “They don’t see that as justice happening.”

Each sexual assault case is unique. Best-case scenarios involve a participating survivor, DNA evidence, physical evidence and witnesses — elements that would give a jury confidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the person being accused of the assault is guilty.

That’s rare.

Rape cases are fluid, McGowan said. A victim can change his or her mind halfway through the process and not want to continue the case. There could be no physical evidence to counter a denial from the accused.

For cases where evidence is unavailable and a victim isn’t ready to share in open court, prosecutors often try to get what they can, such as working with the defense to reach a plea deal, which isn’t always satisfying justice.

“Even at the beginning of the process when I’m in the ER with somebody who is reporting a sexual assault and is considering a rape kit, they want to know at that point, am I going to get justice?” Markgraf said. “That’s so tough for me as an advocate because the chances are they won’t get justice just because these cases are hard to prosecute and very rarely do they go to trial.”

Nationally, about 1 in 10 rapists see jail time, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). That number includes the two-thirds of rapes that don’t get reported to law enforcement, according to the same site.

About 16.5 percent of those charged with rape were convicted, according to a 2009 data analysis on felony defendants from the country’s 75 largest counties from the Bureau of Justice. The majority of those were reached in a plea deal with attorneys rather than a jury trial.

The same trend carries into cases involving a college student.

Former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner was given a six-month sentence but was released after only three for good behavior after a jury found him guilty of multiple felonies from a 2015 assault of an unconscious woman behind a dumpster.

University of Colorado student Austin Wilkerson was convicted by a jury of sexually assaulting a woman in March 2014. Prosecutors said he “isolated and raped the half-conscious victim” after a St. Patrick’s Day celebration, according to The Guardian, after he had told his friends that he was going to take care of her.

He saw no prison time, and instead was ordered two years of “work release” and 20 years to life on probation.

The reality of sentencing in these cases could serve as a barrier to future victims who are considering reporting the offense, Whalen said.

“It’s terrifying that (Rambo) got sentenced to 10 days in jail after admitting he did this to a girl,” the Mobridge native said. “If it would happen to me again, I (wouldn’t) want to tell anyone because they just get a slap on the wrist. I feel like it’s more of a downer on people who would want to report.”

The victim in Rambo and Williamson’s case didn’t report the incident to police, according to court documents. Someone known to the victim reported it to university police.

“The victim was very reluctant about having an investigation started due to the backlash she believed she would suffer from the football team, student population and community,” according to the affidavit.

The fear of backlash hovers over nearly every survivor who walks into the Compass Center, Markgraf said. They’re often told by people in whom they confide that their assailant “would never do this.”

“They’re not believed a lot of the time. We’ve seen it a lot,” Markgraf said.

It’s even more intimidating when the accused has the high profile of an athlete.

ESPN’s Outside the Lines did a five-year look at 10 major college sports programs across the country. It found that the status of an athlete has a “chilling effect” on whether cases were brought to police and how the cases were investigated.

More than 2,000 documents showed that athletes from the 10 schools examined benefited from the “confluence of factors” readily available to many college sports programs, such as quick access to high-profile attorneys and intimidation felt by witnesses to take on a well-known accuser.

“Numerous cases never resulted in charges because accusers and witnesses were afraid to detail wrongdoing, feared harassment from fans and the media, or were pressured to drop charges in the interest of the sports programs,” according to Outside the Lines.

“It’s surprising to think that anyone would do this, and athletes are held to a higher standard than most,” Whalen said. “It was crazy to think that they would risk everything for what they thought was fun.”

___

Information from: Argus Leader, http://www.argusleader.com

An AP Member Exchange shared by the Argus Leader.

Source link

The post Did justice prevail in USD football players accused of rape? first appeared on Bad Sporters.

]]> https://www.badsporters.com/2018/04/14/did-justice-prevail-in-usd-football-players-accused-of-rape-3/feed/ 0 3590 Did justice prevail in USD football players accused of rape? https://www.badsporters.com/2018/04/14/did-justice-prevail-in-usd-football-players-accused-of-rape-2/ https://www.badsporters.com/2018/04/14/did-justice-prevail-in-usd-football-players-accused-of-rape-2/#respond Sat, 14 Apr 2018 08:28:14 +0000 http://www.badsporters.com/?p=3588 The thought of someone convicted of illegal sexual contact walking around a college campus is disturbing to rape victim Tara-Claire Whalen. Whalen, a sophomore at the University of South Dakota, was shocked when in October, the heart of football season, two of the school’s players were arrested on rape charges stemming from an incident at […]

The post Did justice prevail in USD football players accused of rape? first appeared on Bad Sporters.

]]>

The thought of someone convicted of illegal sexual contact walking around a college campus is disturbing to rape victim Tara-Claire Whalen.

Whalen, a sophomore at the University of South Dakota, was shocked when in October, the heart of football season, two of the school’s players were arrested on rape charges stemming from an incident at an off-campus residence.

What concerns her now is that one of them, who admitted to his involvement and was criminally convicted, is still enrolled.

“It’s terrifying to think someone who should be in jail isn’t and can still be walking around our campus and still has the potential to do this to someone else,” said Whalen, who is part of student organization PAVE: Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment.

The Argus Leader reports Danny Rambo Jr., a USD junior, was charged with second-degree rape after a woman reported being sexually assaulted by him and another student, Dale Williamson Jr., while she was having consensual sex with a different student, who was also a football player. Williamson was charged with attempted rape and has pleaded not guilty.

In November, an arrest warrant for a separate case was issued for Williamson. He was charged with second- and third-degree rape from a March 2017 incident. Williamson is awaiting trial on both cases.

Neither individual is on the football roster, the university confirmed. Williamson is no longer enrolled.

Rambo’s criminal case has closed up: he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and received his sentence in February, leaving some to wonder how a student who admitted to a crime involving sexual contact can remain on campus.

But criminal procedures and college disciplinary processes are separate, and universities are strapped in their ability to respond until their own Title IX investigation can be completed.

USD officials said in October a Title IX investigation was taking place but have not said if it was completed.

“With the exception of interim measures and the general authority to protect the safety and well-being of the campus community, no action is taken against a student accused of violating the Student Code of Conduct until the conduct process is concluded and the student is found to have engaged in prohibited conduct,” South Dakota Board of Regents general counsel Guilherme Costa said in an email.

Rambo is still enrolled at the university and won’t be seeing much jail time, a result that isn’t uncommon locally and nationwide. That’s true even for an incident that was jarring when it was first reported last fall.

The victim and two of her friends joined Williamson, Rambo and another USD football player to watch a movie in his bedroom at an off-campus residence on Oct. 22, according to an affidavit for an arrest warrant.

The victim’s friends left the residence, and Williamson and Rambo exited the room at 10:26 p.m., according to the court document.

The victim texted her friend until 11:06 p.m., when she told her friend that she and the third student were going to have consensual sex, according to the court documents. Rambo and Williamson re-entered the room without the victim’s knowledge.

Rambo, according to court documents, approached the victim without her knowing and penetrated her with his fingers. She stopped him and he left the room. Williamson twice tried to force the victim to give him oral sex, according to the affidavit.

The victim told police that the other player, who is a senior and will graduate, did not seem surprised that Rambo and Williamson entered the room. She also said he did not ask them to leave the room.

The three players were suspended from the football team.

Rambo, 21, was initially charged with second-degree rape. In February, as part of a plea deal, he pleaded guilty to sexual contact without consent with a person capable of consenting, a Class 1 misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of a year in county jail. The charge does not require Rambo to register as a sex offender.

Rape in the second degree is a Class 1 felony, which would have given the judge the opportunity to sentence up to 50 years in prison.

Rambo was sentenced to spend 10 days in the Clay County Jail, starting Nov. 1.

Jason Rumpca, a Beresford lawyer who handled the defense proceedings, declined to comment beyond providing sentencing information.

Clay County State’s Attorney Alexis Tracy said she was unable to comment on Rambo’s case, as it is connected with Williamson’s currently open case. But experts say a drastic drop in sentence parameters and charge level is nothing new in cases involving a sexual crime.

Sexual crime cases hinge upon victim involvement, said Minnehaha County State’s Attorney Aaron McGowan. From identifying the assailant, if possible, to repeatedly providing intricate details to an intimately harrowing experience, the court process can be another barrier to closure.

But softer sentences can also be difficult to grasp.

“It’s rough on victims when it gets (pleaded) down because a lot of them come to us and want justice to be done,” said Michelle Markgraf, director of the Compass Center for sexual assault and domestic violence advocacy in Sioux Falls. “They don’t see that as justice happening.”

Each sexual assault case is unique. Best-case scenarios involve a participating survivor, DNA evidence, physical evidence and witnesses — elements that would give a jury confidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the person being accused of the assault is guilty.

That’s rare.

Rape cases are fluid, McGowan said. A victim can change his or her mind halfway through the process and not want to continue the case. There could be no physical evidence to counter a denial from the accused.

For cases where evidence is unavailable and a victim isn’t ready to share in open court, prosecutors often try to get what they can, such as working with the defense to reach a plea deal, which isn’t always satisfying justice.

“Even at the beginning of the process when I’m in the ER with somebody who is reporting a sexual assault and is considering a rape kit, they want to know at that point, am I going to get justice?” Markgraf said. “That’s so tough for me as an advocate because the chances are they won’t get justice just because these cases are hard to prosecute and very rarely do they go to trial.”

Nationally, about 1 in 10 rapists see jail time, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). That number includes the two-thirds of rapes that don’t get reported to law enforcement, according to the same site.

About 16.5 percent of those charged with rape were convicted, according to a 2009 data analysis on felony defendants from the country’s 75 largest counties from the Bureau of Justice. The majority of those were reached in a plea deal with attorneys rather than a jury trial.

The same trend carries into cases involving a college student.

Former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner was given a six-month sentence but was released after only three for good behavior after a jury found him guilty of multiple felonies from a 2015 assault of an unconscious woman behind a dumpster.

University of Colorado student Austin Wilkerson was convicted by a jury of sexually assaulting a woman in March 2014. Prosecutors said he “isolated and raped the half-conscious victim” after a St. Patrick’s Day celebration, according to The Guardian, after he had told his friends that he was going to take care of her.

He saw no prison time, and instead was ordered two years of “work release” and 20 years to life on probation.

The reality of sentencing in these cases could serve as a barrier to future victims who are considering reporting the offense, Whalen said.

“It’s terrifying that (Rambo) got sentenced to 10 days in jail after admitting he did this to a girl,” the Mobridge native said. “If it would happen to me again, I (wouldn’t) want to tell anyone because they just get a slap on the wrist. I feel like it’s more of a downer on people who would want to report.”

The victim in Rambo and Williamson’s case didn’t report the incident to police, according to court documents. Someone known to the victim reported it to university police.

“The victim was very reluctant about having an investigation started due to the backlash she believed she would suffer from the football team, student population and community,” according to the affidavit.

The fear of backlash hovers over nearly every survivor who walks into the Compass Center, Markgraf said. They’re often told by people in whom they confide that their assailant “would never do this.”

“They’re not believed a lot of the time. We’ve seen it a lot,” Markgraf said.

It’s even more intimidating when the accused has the high profile of an athlete.

ESPN’s Outside the Lines did a five-year look at 10 major college sports programs across the country. It found that the status of an athlete has a “chilling effect” on whether cases were brought to police and how the cases were investigated.

More than 2,000 documents showed that athletes from the 10 schools examined benefited from the “confluence of factors” readily available to many college sports programs, such as quick access to high-profile attorneys and intimidation felt by witnesses to take on a well-known accuser.

“Numerous cases never resulted in charges because accusers and witnesses were afraid to detail wrongdoing, feared harassment from fans and the media, or were pressured to drop charges in the interest of the sports programs,” according to Outside the Lines.

“It’s surprising to think that anyone would do this, and athletes are held to a higher standard than most,” Whalen said. “It was crazy to think that they would risk everything for what they thought was fun.”

___

Information from: Argus Leader, http://www.argusleader.com

An AP Member Exchange shared by the Argus Leader.

Source link

The post Did justice prevail in USD football players accused of rape? first appeared on Bad Sporters.

]]> https://www.badsporters.com/2018/04/14/did-justice-prevail-in-usd-football-players-accused-of-rape-2/feed/ 0 3588 Did justice prevail in USD football players accused of rape? https://www.badsporters.com/2018/04/14/did-justice-prevail-in-usd-football-players-accused-of-rape/ https://www.badsporters.com/2018/04/14/did-justice-prevail-in-usd-football-players-accused-of-rape/#respond Sat, 14 Apr 2018 08:19:54 +0000 http://www.badsporters.com/?p=3586 The thought of someone convicted of illegal sexual contact walking around a college campus is disturbing to rape victim Tara-Claire Whalen. Whalen, a sophomore at the University of South Dakota, was shocked when in October, the heart of football season, two of the school’s players were arrested on rape charges stemming from an incident at […]

The post Did justice prevail in USD football players accused of rape? first appeared on Bad Sporters.

]]>

The thought of someone convicted of illegal sexual contact walking around a college campus is disturbing to rape victim Tara-Claire Whalen.

Whalen, a sophomore at the University of South Dakota, was shocked when in October, the heart of football season, two of the school’s players were arrested on rape charges stemming from an incident at an off-campus residence.

What concerns her now is that one of them, who admitted to his involvement and was criminally convicted, is still enrolled.

“It’s terrifying to think someone who should be in jail isn’t and can still be walking around our campus and still has the potential to do this to someone else,” said Whalen, who is part of student organization PAVE: Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment.

The Argus Leader reports Danny Rambo Jr., a USD junior, was charged with second-degree rape after a woman reported being sexually assaulted by him and another student, Dale Williamson Jr., while she was having consensual sex with a different student, who was also a football player. Williamson was charged with attempted rape and has pleaded not guilty.

In November, an arrest warrant for a separate case was issued for Williamson. He was charged with second- and third-degree rape from a March 2017 incident. Williamson is awaiting trial on both cases.

Neither individual is on the football roster, the university confirmed. Williamson is no longer enrolled.

Rambo’s criminal case has closed up: he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and received his sentence in February, leaving some to wonder how a student who admitted to a crime involving sexual contact can remain on campus.

But criminal procedures and college disciplinary processes are separate, and universities are strapped in their ability to respond until their own Title IX investigation can be completed.

USD officials said in October a Title IX investigation was taking place but have not said if it was completed.

“With the exception of interim measures and the general authority to protect the safety and well-being of the campus community, no action is taken against a student accused of violating the Student Code of Conduct until the conduct process is concluded and the student is found to have engaged in prohibited conduct,” South Dakota Board of Regents general counsel Guilherme Costa said in an email.

Rambo is still enrolled at the university and won’t be seeing much jail time, a result that isn’t uncommon locally and nationwide. That’s true even for an incident that was jarring when it was first reported last fall.

The victim and two of her friends joined Williamson, Rambo and another USD football player to watch a movie in his bedroom at an off-campus residence on Oct. 22, according to an affidavit for an arrest warrant.

The victim’s friends left the residence, and Williamson and Rambo exited the room at 10:26 p.m., according to the court document.

The victim texted her friend until 11:06 p.m., when she told her friend that she and the third student were going to have consensual sex, according to the court documents. Rambo and Williamson re-entered the room without the victim’s knowledge.

Rambo, according to court documents, approached the victim without her knowing and penetrated her with his fingers. She stopped him and he left the room. Williamson twice tried to force the victim to give him oral sex, according to the affidavit.

The victim told police that the other player, who is a senior and will graduate, did not seem surprised that Rambo and Williamson entered the room. She also said he did not ask them to leave the room.

The three players were suspended from the football team.

Rambo, 21, was initially charged with second-degree rape. In February, as part of a plea deal, he pleaded guilty to sexual contact without consent with a person capable of consenting, a Class 1 misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of a year in county jail. The charge does not require Rambo to register as a sex offender.

Rape in the second degree is a Class 1 felony, which would have given the judge the opportunity to sentence up to 50 years in prison.

Rambo was sentenced to spend 10 days in the Clay County Jail, starting Nov. 1.

Jason Rumpca, a Beresford lawyer who handled the defense proceedings, declined to comment beyond providing sentencing information.

Clay County State’s Attorney Alexis Tracy said she was unable to comment on Rambo’s case, as it is connected with Williamson’s currently open case. But experts say a drastic drop in sentence parameters and charge level is nothing new in cases involving a sexual crime.

Sexual crime cases hinge upon victim involvement, said Minnehaha County State’s Attorney Aaron McGowan. From identifying the assailant, if possible, to repeatedly providing intricate details to an intimately harrowing experience, the court process can be another barrier to closure.

But softer sentences can also be difficult to grasp.

“It’s rough on victims when it gets (pleaded) down because a lot of them come to us and want justice to be done,” said Michelle Markgraf, director of the Compass Center for sexual assault and domestic violence advocacy in Sioux Falls. “They don’t see that as justice happening.”

Each sexual assault case is unique. Best-case scenarios involve a participating survivor, DNA evidence, physical evidence and witnesses — elements that would give a jury confidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the person being accused of the assault is guilty.

That’s rare.

Rape cases are fluid, McGowan said. A victim can change his or her mind halfway through the process and not want to continue the case. There could be no physical evidence to counter a denial from the accused.

For cases where evidence is unavailable and a victim isn’t ready to share in open court, prosecutors often try to get what they can, such as working with the defense to reach a plea deal, which isn’t always satisfying justice.

“Even at the beginning of the process when I’m in the ER with somebody who is reporting a sexual assault and is considering a rape kit, they want to know at that point, am I going to get justice?” Markgraf said. “That’s so tough for me as an advocate because the chances are they won’t get justice just because these cases are hard to prosecute and very rarely do they go to trial.”

Nationally, about 1 in 10 rapists see jail time, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). That number includes the two-thirds of rapes that don’t get reported to law enforcement, according to the same site.

About 16.5 percent of those charged with rape were convicted, according to a 2009 data analysis on felony defendants from the country’s 75 largest counties from the Bureau of Justice. The majority of those were reached in a plea deal with attorneys rather than a jury trial.

The same trend carries into cases involving a college student.

Former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner was given a six-month sentence but was released after only three for good behavior after a jury found him guilty of multiple felonies from a 2015 assault of an unconscious woman behind a dumpster.

University of Colorado student Austin Wilkerson was convicted by a jury of sexually assaulting a woman in March 2014. Prosecutors said he “isolated and raped the half-conscious victim” after a St. Patrick’s Day celebration, according to The Guardian, after he had told his friends that he was going to take care of her.

He saw no prison time, and instead was ordered two years of “work release” and 20 years to life on probation.

The reality of sentencing in these cases could serve as a barrier to future victims who are considering reporting the offense, Whalen said.

“It’s terrifying that (Rambo) got sentenced to 10 days in jail after admitting he did this to a girl,” the Mobridge native said. “If it would happen to me again, I (wouldn’t) want to tell anyone because they just get a slap on the wrist. I feel like it’s more of a downer on people who would want to report.”

The victim in Rambo and Williamson’s case didn’t report the incident to police, according to court documents. Someone known to the victim reported it to university police.

“The victim was very reluctant about having an investigation started due to the backlash she believed she would suffer from the football team, student population and community,” according to the affidavit.

The fear of backlash hovers over nearly every survivor who walks into the Compass Center, Markgraf said. They’re often told by people in whom they confide that their assailant “would never do this.”

“They’re not believed a lot of the time. We’ve seen it a lot,” Markgraf said.

It’s even more intimidating when the accused has the high profile of an athlete.

ESPN’s Outside the Lines did a five-year look at 10 major college sports programs across the country. It found that the status of an athlete has a “chilling effect” on whether cases were brought to police and how the cases were investigated.

More than 2,000 documents showed that athletes from the 10 schools examined benefited from the “confluence of factors” readily available to many college sports programs, such as quick access to high-profile attorneys and intimidation felt by witnesses to take on a well-known accuser.

“Numerous cases never resulted in charges because accusers and witnesses were afraid to detail wrongdoing, feared harassment from fans and the media, or were pressured to drop charges in the interest of the sports programs,” according to Outside the Lines.

“It’s surprising to think that anyone would do this, and athletes are held to a higher standard than most,” Whalen said. “It was crazy to think that they would risk everything for what they thought was fun.”

___

Information from: Argus Leader, http://www.argusleader.com

An AP Member Exchange shared by the Argus Leader.

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]]> https://www.badsporters.com/2018/04/14/did-justice-prevail-in-usd-football-players-accused-of-rape/feed/ 0 3586 Crime and Punishment: Did justice prevail in case of USD football players accused of rape? https://www.badsporters.com/2018/04/07/crime-and-punishment-did-justice-prevail-in-case-of-usd-football-players-accused-of-rape/ https://www.badsporters.com/2018/04/07/crime-and-punishment-did-justice-prevail-in-case-of-usd-football-players-accused-of-rape/#respond Sat, 07 Apr 2018 17:31:18 +0000 http://www.badsporters.com/?p=3409 CLOSE The cases for two former University of South Dakota football players who faced rape charges are moving forward. Danny Rambo Jr. pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and was sentenced. Dale Williamson Jr.’s case is ongoing. Rambo is still a student. Williamson is no longer enrolled. Wochit Danny Rambo(Photo: File) The thought of someone […]

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The cases for two former University of South Dakota football players who faced rape charges are moving forward. Danny Rambo Jr. pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and was sentenced. Dale Williamson Jr.’s case is ongoing. Rambo is still a student. Williamson is no longer enrolled.
Wochit

Danny Rambo(Photo: File)

The thought of someone convicted of illegal sexual contact walking around a college campus is disturbing to former rape victim Tara-Claire Whalen. 

Whalen, a sophomore at the University of South Dakota, was shocked when in October 2017, the heart of football season, two of the school’s players were arrested on rape charges stemming from an incident at an off-campus residence.

What concerns her now is that one of them, who admitted to his involvement and was criminally convicted, is still enrolled. 

“It’s terrifying to think someone who should be in jail isn’t and can still be walking around our campus and still has the potential to do this to someone else,” said Whalen, who is part of student organization PAVE: Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment. 

Danny Rambo Jr., a USD junior, was charged with second-degree rape after a woman reported being sexually assaulted by him and another student, Dale Williamson Jr., while she was having consensual sex with a different student, who was also a football player. Williamson was charged with attempted rape and has pleaded not guilty. 

In November 2017, an arrest warrant for a separate case was issued for Williamson. He was charged with second- and third-degree rape from a March 2017 incident. Williamson is awaiting trial on both cases. 

Neither individual is on the football roster, the university confirmed this week. Williamson is no longer enrolled.

Rambo’s criminal case has closed up: he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and received his sentence in February, leaving some to wonder how a student who admitted to a crime involving sexual contact can remain on campus.

But criminal procedures and college disciplinary processes are separate, and universities are strapped in their ability to respond until their own Title IX investigation can be completed. 

More: South Dakota Board of Regents passes interim Title IX sexual assault guidelines

USD officials said in October a Title IX investigation was taking place but have not said if it was completed. 

“With the exception of interim measures and the general authority to protect the safety and well-being of the campus community, no action is taken against a student accused of violating the Student Code of Conduct until the conduct process is concluded and the student is found to have engaged in prohibited conduct,” South Dakota Board of Regents general counsel Guilherme Costa said in an email. 

From left, Danny Rambo and Dale Williamson (Photo: Clay County Courthouse)

Crime and punishment

Rambo is still enrolled at the university and won’t be seeing much jail time, a result that isn’t uncommon locally and nationwide. That’s true even for an incident that was jarring when it was first reported last fall.

The victim and two of her friends joined Williamson, Rambo and another USD football player to watch a movie in his bedroom at an off-campus residence on Oct. 22, 2017, according to an affidavit for an arrest warrant. 

The victim’s friends left the residence, and Williamson and Rambo exited the room at 10:26 p.m., according to the court document.

The victim texted her friend until 11:06 p.m., when she told her friend that she and the third student were going to have consensual sex, according to the court documents. Rambo and Williamson re-entered the room without the victim’s knowledge.

More: Three University of South Dakota Coyotes football players suspended indefinitely

Rambo, according to court documents, approached the victim without her knowing and inserted his fingers into her vagina. She stopped him and he left the room. Williamson twice tried to force the victim to give him oral sex by grabbing her hair and moving her head, according to the affidavit. 

The victim told police that the other player, who is a senior and will graduate, did not seem surprised that Rambo and Williamson entered the room. She also said he did not ask them to leave the room.

The three players were suspended from the football team. 

Rambo, 21, was initially charged with second-degree rape. In February, as part of a plea deal, he pleaded guilty to sexual contact without consent with a person capable of consenting, a Class 1 misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of a year in county jail. The charge does not require Rambo to register as a sex offender. 

Rape in the second degree is a Class 1 felony, which would have given the judge the opportunity to sentence up to 50 years in prison. 

Rambo was sentenced to spend 10 days in the Clay County Jail, starting Nov. 1.

Jason Rumpca, a Beresford lawyer who handled the defense proceedings, declined to comment beyond providing sentencing information.

Clay County State’s Attorney Alexis Tracy said she was unable to comment on Rambo’s case, as it is connected with Williamson’s currently open case. But experts say a drastic drop in sentence parameters and charge level is nothing new in cases involving a sexual crime. 

More: New details emerge as South Dakota football players face rape charges

Sexual crime cases hinge upon victim involvement, said Minnehaha County State’s Attorney Aaron McGowan. From identifying the assailant, if possible, to repeatedly providing intricate details to an intimately harrowing experience, the court process can be another barrier to closure. 

But softer sentences can also be difficult to grasp.

“It’s rough on victims when it gets (pleaded) down because a lot of them come to us and want justice to be done,” said Michelle Markgraf, director of the Compass Center for sexual assault and domestic violence advocacy in Sioux Falls. “They don’t see that as justice happening.”

Beyond a doubt

Each sexual assault case is unique. Best-case scenarios involve a participating survivor, DNA evidence, physical evidence and witnesses – elements that would give a jury confidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the person being accused of the assault is guilty. 

That’s rare. 

Rape cases are fluid, McGowan said. A victim can change his or her mind halfway through the process and not want to continue the case. There could be no physical evidence to counter a denial from the accused. 

For cases where evidence is unavailable and a victim isn’t ready to share in open court, prosecutors often try to get what they can, such as working with the defense to reach a plea deal, which isn’t always satisfying justice.

University of South Dakota students and football players Danny Rambo, 20, left, and Dale Williamson, 21, turned themselves in on rape charges, the Vermillion Police Department announced Monday night. (Photo: Submitted photos)

“Even at the beginning of the process when I’m in the ER with somebody who is reporting a sexual assault and is considering a rape kit, they want to know at that point, am I going to get justice?” Markgraf said. “That’s so tough for me as an advocate because the chances are they won’t get justice just because these cases are hard to prosecute and very rarely do they go to trial.”

Nationally, about 1 in 10 rapists see jail time, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). That number includes the two-thirds of rapes that don’t get reported to law enforcement, according to the same site. 

About 16.5 percent of those charged with rape were convicted, according to a 2009 data analysis on felony defendants from the country’s 75 largest counties from the Bureau of Justice. The majority of those were reached in a plea deal with attorneys rather than a jury trial. 

The same trend carries into cases involving a college student.

Former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner was given a six-month sentence but was released after only three for good behavior after a jury found him guilty of multiple felonies from a 2015 assault of an unconscious woman behind a dumpster.

University of Colorado student Austin Wilkerson was convicted by a jury of sexually assaulting a woman in March 2014. Prosecutors said he “isolated and raped the half-conscious victim” after a St. Patrick’s Day celebration, according to The Guardian, after he had told his friends that he was going to take care of her.

He saw no prison time, and instead was ordered two years of “work release” and 20 years to life on probation.

More: Campus sexual assaults draw calls for more action

Different standard?

The reality of sentencing in these cases could serve as a barrier to future victims who are considering reporting the offense, Whalen said. 

“It’s terrifying that (Rambo) got sentenced to 10 days in jail after admitting he did this to a girl,” the Mobridge native said. “If it would happen to me again, I (wouldn’t) want to tell anyone because they just get a slap on the wrist. I feel like it’s more of a downer on people who would want to report.”

The victim in Rambo and Williamson’s case didn’t report the incident to police, according to court documents. Someone known to the victim reported it to university police. 

“The victim was very reluctant about having an investigation started due to the backlash she believed she would suffer from the football team, student population and community,” according to the affidavit. 

The fear of backlash hovers over nearly every survivor who walks into the Compass Center, Markgraf said. They’re often told by people in whom they confide that their assailant “would never do this.” 

“They’re not believed a lot of the time. We’ve seen it a lot,” Markgraf said. 

It’s even more intimidating when the accused has the high profile of an athlete. 

ESPN’s Outside the Lines did a five-year look at 10 major college sports programs across the country. It found that the status of an athlete has a “chilling effect” on whether cases were brought to police and how the cases were investigated. 

More than 2,000 documents showed that athletes from the 10 schools examined benefited from the “confluence of factors” readily available to many college sports programs, such as quick access to high-profile attorneys and intimidation felt by witnesses to take on a well-known accuser. 

“Numerous cases never resulted in charges because accusers and witnesses were afraid to detail wrongdoing, feared harassment from fans and the media, or were pressured to drop charges in the interest of the sports programs,” according to Outside the Lines.

“It’s surprising to think that anyone would do this, and athletes are held to a higher standard than most,” Whalen said. “It was crazy to think that they would risk everything for what they thought was fun.”

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