Dont' confuse with what he was "charged with"...
espn.com headline right now - 'former hawkeye everson convicted in sex case'.
if ever there was a misleading headline.......given he was charged with mis. assault with no sex stipulations.
with what he was found guilty of. The original indictment included charges of third-degree sexual assault, second-degree sexual assault and assault. So he was charged with all of those. People are charged with crimes all the time. What they end up being convicted of or pleading guilty to are often much different.
The charge of second-degree was thrown out by the judge after the prosecution presented its case. Spies, the defense attorney, argued that at that time the second-degree charge was not proven at all by the prosecution (which it wasn't). The prosecution would have needed to prove that Everson was aided by Satterfield, and Satterfield's testimony was exactly the opposite. With such weak evidence, it seems that the second-degree charge should have never been brought in the first place. The judge agreed, and threw that out. By the way, that is unusual in a case like this. Usually the prosecution has at least enough evidence to get the judge to not throw out a charge. It's not unheard of, but unusual.
For third-degree sexual assault, Everson was found not guilty by the jury. Again, it came down to the fact that the prosecution had only the victim's testimony, and her testimony was that she couldn't remember anything that happened. How do you convict on that? Spies successfully showed that at other times during the evening she was talking to people, interacting with people and seemed normal/coherent.
When it came down to it, it looks like the jury agreed that something occurred in that room that wasn't right, but not all of them agreed that it rose to the level of third-degree assault. They were left something of an out with the misdemeanor assault charge.
After following the case and reading about the testimony and evidence presented, I can't believe that charges were brought in the first place. Unless the prosecution was just inept and failed to present evidence that was out there but they just chose not to bring, then I don't see how they failed at trial. Especially once Satterfield testified and basically said he didn't know anything. He was the only one who could have swung things toward conviction on the third-degree assault charge.
Not condoning the behavior of the two former players in this case at all. Despicable comes to mind. But to send someone to jail there needs to be more than a district attorney saying someone committed a crime. There needs to be evidence for it.
rolleyes
