Tuesday, July 17, 2007

University of Minnesota cornerback Dominic Jones has been charged with third-degree criminal sexual conduct

Esme Murphy:

Dominic Jones Robert McField had been convicted of two armed robberies but was somehow still living in campus housing the night of the attack.

Prosecutors call it rape at a drunken party which was caught on cell phone video. They have charged University of Minnesota cornerback Dominic Jones with third-degree criminal sexual conduct.

However, WCCO-TV has confirmed that another U of M football player who'd been kicked off the team actually organized the party.

Robert McField had been convicted of two armed robberies but was somehow still living in campus housing the night of the attack.

On Monday, Jones was charged with sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.

The woman's blood-alcohol level was estimated at least 0.30 percent by a doctor who reviewed police reports and witness statements, according to the criminal complaint. Stephen Smith, the doctor, based his estimate on her size and weight and descriptions of the amount of alcohol consumed.

A friend of Jones had taken a video of part of the assault on his cell phone at the apartment that night. The file was deleted, but forensic experts examining the phone were able to recover a portion of the deleted file. The female in the video was unresponsive and was identified as the victim. The male in the video was identified as Jones.

Prosecutors said Jones was involved in an incident at the University Village apartments late on the night of April 3 or early April 4. On April 6, a woman told police she was raped in the University Village complex.

The woman was taken to a local hospital and evidence was collected.

"It's amazing what the forensics can do to reconstruct that. That cell phone video ... A picture is worth 1,000 words, and that video reflects what happened, at least at that point in time," said Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman. "The charges represent a significant next step in this case. The charge is a serious one."

University of Minnesota Football Team in Cell Phone Rape Scandal

Gopher Football: This Just Gets Worse

2 Comments:

At 11:10 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think it isn't so unreasonable to describe college admission as a zero sum game -- there are a finite number of places, so if these guys were admitted as students then that means two others were not.

This story suggests a problem with college athletics that cannot have escaped wide notice (although it would be rather uncool to comment on it): many of the athletes just do not belong in college, using any reasonable standard. And I would say a good majority of those are black. Although of course they are not all criminals. As these two are, in addition to very likely belonging to the aforementioned subset of college athletes who, as students, really don't belong there.

 
At 2:55 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why do so many American universities put such an emphasis on recruiting athletes?

 

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