FSU QB won’t be charged

Florida state attorney Willie Meggs announced Thursday that his office will not bring charges against Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston, who was accused of sexual assault by a female student in December 2012. “We try to treat everybody the same, and I think we have a record of doing that,” Meggs said. “We worked as fast as we could in the time constraints that we had.”

Florida state attorney Willie Meggs announced Thursday that his office will not bring charges against Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston, who was accused of sexual assault by a female student in December 2012. “We try to treat everybody the same, and I think we have a record of doing that,” Meggs said. “We worked as fast as we could in the time constraints that we had.”

Friday, December 6, 2013

A Florida prosecutor on Thursday announced that Florida State University quarterback Jameis Winston will not face charges of sexual battery.

The Seminoles are ranked No. 1 in the nation and Winston will be leading the team against Duke on Saturday in the Atlantic Coast Conference Championship game. If the Seminoles win, they would play for the national championship next month in Pasadena, Calif. If Winston had been charged, he likely would have been suspended from playing.

William N. Meggs, the state attorney for Florida’s 2nd Judicial Circuit who took over the investigation last month, was critical of the Tallahassee Police Department’s investigation of the reported assault but said he concluded there was not enough evidence to obtain a conviction.

“There is a burden of proof, and we don’t feel like we could meet that burden,” said Meggs, who added that the evidence was “carefully examined.”

Timothy Jansen, a lawyer for Winston, said Thursday afternoon he had seen his client after the announcement and that Winston was happy and is now even more focused on football.

Winston, 19, has been one of the most dominant players in college football this season. But ever since a sexual assault allegation by a former FSU student became public last month,his on-field exploits have been weighed against how law enforcement in a rabid college football community handled the investigation as well as the role character plays in the awarding of one of sport’s most iconic awards: the Heisman Trophy.

“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 decision is unlikely to end criticism of how the Tallahassee police handled the investigation, which seemed to have disappeared until the charges became public. The 19-year-old woman, an FSU student, first reported an off-campus sexual assault to the police 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 and have accused the Tallahassee police of a halfhearted investigation in which DNA evidence was not collected early and potential witnesses were not spoken with.

Winston refused to be interviewed by police.

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’ announcement. She said she was with friends and had five to six shots at a local bar and that her “memory is very broken from that point forward.”

She told the police that she had taken a cab with a “nondescript” black man to an apartment where she was raped. She did not identify that man as Winston until about a month after she reported the assault.

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 recalls riding on a scooter and being dropped off at a campus intersection.

Evidence gathered the day of the incident matched Winston’s DNA, which was collected by the police last month. Jansen said Winston had consensual sex with the accuser, a contention the woman’s family has denied.

Winston, who was voted the Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year on Wednesday, has continued to play for the top-ranked Seminoles and has declined to talk about the investigation. He also is the front-runner to win the Heisman Trophy, given to college football’s most outstanding player.

Among the more than 900 Heisman voters, including former winners and news media members, the accusation against Winston has been a source for soul-searching, with ballots due Monday.

It is not the first time the Heisman Trophy has been shrouded in controversy. In 1972, Nebraska’s Johnny Rodgers won the award despite a felony conviction for robbing a gas station. Rodgers, 62, was granted a pardon by the state of Nebraska last month.

In 2010, Reggie Bush gave back the Heisman he had won at Southern California after NCAA investigators found that he may have taken more than $300,000 in cash and benefits from an agent. That same year, Auburn’s Cam Newton accepted the Heisman amid allegations that his father had offered his son’s talents to Mississippi State for $180,000.

Information for this article was contributed by The New York Times and The Associated Press.

Sports, Pages 17 on 12/06/2013