William
N. Meggs, the state attorney who took over the investigation last month
from the Tallahassee Police Department, said there was insufficient
evidence to obtain a conviction.“We have a duty as prosecutors to
determine if each case has a reasonable likelihood of conviction,” said
Meggs,canada goose jacket women who
added that the evidence was carefully examined. “After reviewing the
facts in this case, we do not feel that we can reach those
burdens.”Since the sexual assault allegation by a former Florida State
student became public last month, Winston’s on-field exploits have been
weighed against concerns about how the investigation was handled in a
rabid college football community and what role character should play in
awarding the Heisman Trophy.Meggs’s decision was unlikely to end
criticism of the police department’s inquiry, which seemed to have
disappeared until the charges became public.A 19-year-old woman first
reported an off-campus sexual assault to the police on Dec. 7, 2012. The
woman’s family said a police investigator warned her lawyer that
pursuing the allegation against Winston would subject her to public
scorn. The family has accused the police of a halfhearted investigation
in which DNA evidence was not collected early and potential witnesses
were not spoken with.
Meggs said the police had been cooperative with his office since it got involved in the case three weeks ago.“Obviously,Wholesale Lingerie Sexy Lingerie it
would have been better if it had been handled a little earlier,” said
Meggs, who has been in the state’s attorney office for 29 years.The
top-ranked Seminoles are heavy favorites in Saturday’s Atlantic Coast
Conference championship game against Duke, and Winston is the favorite
to win the Heisman when the results are revealed next week in New York.
Meggs said that neither the standing of the team — which with a victory
Saturday would almost certainly head to the Bowl Championship Series
title game — nor the award was taken into consideration,Isuzu Auto Parts and
that football players were not treated any differently in his
office.“We try to treat everybody the same, and I think we have a record
of doing that,” Meggs said. “We were not pressured by the football
program or anyone else. We did not consult the football schedule. We
worked as fast as we could in the time constraints that we had.”The
woman told the police she was raped at an apartment after a night of
drinking at a bar near campus, according to a search warrant released
hours before Meggs’s announcement. She said that she was with friends
and had five to six shots of alcohol at a local bar and that her “memory
is very broken from that point Nike Air Maxforward.”
She told the police that she had taken a cab with a “nondescript” black
man to an apartment where she said she was raped. She did not identify
that man as Winston until about a month after she reported the
assault.She said she tried to fight the man off, and at some point,
another man intervened and told him to stop, according to the warrant.
But the two went into a bathroom “where he completed the act.” She had
no idea where the assault took place, she said, but recalled riding on a
scooter and being dropped off at a campus intersection.“Her recall of
the events of that night have been moving around quite a bit,” Meggs
said.Meggs said that toxicology reports showed the accuser had a
blood-alcohol level of .wholesale Dsquared Long Sleeve T-Shirts sale from
www.alipaytrade.com homepage.04 and that there was no evidence of drugs
in her system, including what are commonly referred to as date-rape
drugs. He also said there was no evidence of physical trauma, further
complicating his office’s efforts to file charges.
No comments:
Post a Comment