re: One of Ohio's best HS football teams/town going to be all over the news

i should have read that whole article

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A medical examination at a hospital more than one day after the parties did not reveal any evidence, like semen, that might have supported an accusation of rape, the police said. The Steubenville police knocked on doors of the people thought to be at the parties, but not many people were forthcoming with information. In several instances, the police seized cellphones so they could look for photographs or videos related to the case.

Eventually, 15 phones and 2 iPads were confiscated and analyzed by a cyber crime expert at the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. That expert could not retrieve deleted photographs and videos on most of the phones.

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quote:

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McCafferty, who has been the police chief for 11 years, is sensitive when it comes to criticism of his police force. He took over in the wake of a United States Department of Justice inquiry into the Steubenville Police Department’s patterns of false arrests and excessive force. And he now goes out of his way to try to assure residents that they can trust the police department again.

He said it bothered him when he heard people say that Big Red players got away with crimes in town. If crimes are being committed, he said, they are not being reported. He said no one had ever given him a concrete example of players’ receiving special treatment.

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Nearly nose to nose with a reporter, he growled: “You’re going to get yours. And if you don’t get yours, somebody close to you will.”

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the coach does sound like a dicktron 5000

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“The whole question is consent,” he said. “Was she conscious enough to give consent or not? We think she was. She gave out the pass code to her phone after the sexual assault was said to have occurred.”

Walter Madison, Richmond’s lawyer, said his client was already at a marked disadvantage because so many people discussed the incident online, through blogs and on Twitter.

“It’s an uphill battle because you’ve got social media going on and people formulating opinions, people who weren’t there and don’t know what happened,” he said. “In a small community, it exponentially snowballs out of control. I think the scales are a bit unbalanced.”

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weird situation if the part about her giving out the passcode to her phone is true

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The lawyers for the boys also said the three athletes who testified against their clients had credibility issues. The lawyers said that the police had found photographs of nude women on the phone of one of the witnesses, and that two witnesses had admitted recording some aspect of the suspected assault. Those alone could be crimes, the lawyers said, but the witnesses were given immunity from prosecution. Their testimony, the lawyers suggested, might have been given in a bid for leniency.

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oh so we know now why only 2 are being prosecuted...the others gave testimony and were given immunity

so now we're looking at 4-5 kids involved somewhat

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The special prosecutors on the case, Marianne Hemmeter and Jennifer Brumby of the Ohio Attorney General’s Crimes Against Children unit, declined to comment because the investigation was open.

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so this prosecution isn't even being handled by the local prosecutor OR the local judge (who i posted earlier had recused himself)

seems like a kangaroo court for sure

again, i'm not sure exactly what else there is to do. there is a serious investigation going on with 4-5 kids who are involved (2 charged and the others who were given immunity for testimony). they're prosecuting the 2 kids with a state (not local) agency for impartiality

oh, and this

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Others attacked Goddard, the crime blogger, for her commentary regarding what she called the town’s twisted football culture and its special treatment of football players, including a player who is suing her for defamation. As part of the legal action against her by the player and his family, the court has allowed the family’s lawyers to seek the identities of those people who disparaged the player by name on the blog. The player has not been charged with any crime.

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you have a local journalist who is being sued for her commentary, who is hiding to avoid service so that people who were spreading possible rumors against possibly innocent minors can be protected.

this sounds like a clusterfrick....just the thing for a single individual who almost assuredly wasn't there to act as judge, jury, and executioner over.