Three MSU players formally charged with sexual assault
Ingham Country prosecutor has charged three unnamed Michigan State football players with sexual assault. Story coming soon.
— Dan Murphy (@DanMurphyESPN) June 5, 2017
UPDATE: A brief article from Murphy.
"I have decided to authorize sexual assault charges against the three persons whose warrants were requested by the MSU Police," prosecutor Carol Siemon said. "We are alleging that on the night of January 16, those three persons sexually assaulted a woman in an East Lansing apartment on campus."
The players have not yet been named.
UPDATE 2: Names likely to be released tomorrow:
Prosecutor's office says it doesn't release names until people are arraigned. Arraignments are expected to come tomorrow.
— Dan Murphy (@DanMurphyESPN) June 5, 2017
but it seems interesting that this comes out after the Jones Day report is released and the Matta retirement. Can a story be buried on a non-holiday Monday?
That... seems to be reaching a little bit.
Chuck Norris's nightmares have nightmares about what Jim Harbaugh could do to him.
Conversely, Jim and I are actually good friends.
Pretty likely that the Jones Day report was intentionally dropped right before this as it clears the athletic department and consolidates the news into 1 day. So they can say there is a problem and it was an isolated incident that has been handled by removing all 4 involved from the program. Just ignore the Robertson and Mumphery issues.
Matta is likely a coincidence.
Not to mention that the board of trustees met today. It's not like they get together every day, and I assume the Law Firm waited to present it to them before release. No conspiracy here.
no winners here.
and while we may not like sparty all that much, we would be well advised not to be overly gleeful about this turn of events. not at all.
I get your point, but you might say that justice may turn out to be a winner here.
worlds basically ruined. guilty or not, no winners here, just desolation. and anyone who thinks that 'justice' is always dispensed in the criminal justice world hasn't been in court enough. sometimes it is, but sometimes it is way, far off.
i find it hard to celebrate or enjoy 4 young people whose lives are [expletive]. worse for her than for them, but 4 kids that had some great dreams and hopes are almost certainly never going to get there.
To me it is pretty simple if you don't want to ruin your life, don't rape women, don't have threesomes or foursomes and don't film it. I dont know if anyone is celebrating, but I can tell you I have zero remorse if these allegations are true. I do not like people who hurt other people and when it is on purpose the anger and disgust I feel has never been healthy.
I agree with you, and I have been to Court far more than I ever would have intended, even as a trial lawyer.
I have seen plenty of false accusations, and poorly exercised prosecutorial discretion, but justice "may" be a winner here. We'll find out.
The players are indeed going to pay a stiff price no matter what happens from here, and no matter how the proceeding concludes for them; however, someone should have explained to them better that they are mini-celebrities, and they are going to be targets.
We don't know exactly what happened here yet, and all the victim advocates are already seeping out of the woodwork regardless of whether there is ever a conviction or a victim in reality. Perhaps it is time for another lecture from mgoblog holiday express criminal lawyers on due process? I don't know.
I do know you are correct, but just saying...
Did you miss the word "may" in my original post?
i am curious what the real, no b.s. facts of the case are. assumedly we'll find out more this week. tough to explain the dynamic that can happen without writing a word wall that would bore most, but you already get it given your background.
We know that you know some names.... out with them!
just kidding
kindof
If so, that would be a gut punch to their chances of ever turning things around.
Same names that have already been reported.
When you say it's about to get ugly, do you just mean in terms of the details of this case? I don't know if we will know much until it goes to trial (though I suppose we can get some brief defails when they are arraigned, right?) The Jones Day release prevents this from getting ugly IMO. Maybe there is more heinous stuff coming that you know about, but to me, this is the same level of ugly it has always been rumored to be.
They have a couple more issues and "red locks" to sort out.
If I were MSU I would announce everything today. Rip the band-aid off and dump all the news at once. As is it, they have chosen the "death by a thousand cuts" approach.
For real, but on the other hand they have to protect their players and wait for the legal process to take place. No point releasing info and running a kids name through the mud if the prosecutor isn't going to press charges for example.
It seems they just had a high number of kids make some really stupid choices over a period of time, so each case has it's own timeline, dragging the entire process out. I'm not sure they really can do it all at once.
Maybe this isn't the time/place yet, and maybe I'm just a bad person cause my thoughts went directly here (but everyone has the other comments covered and it's a sports blog)....man if Corley gets booted that is a huge blow to the MSUs offense. You figure if Sparty wanted to have any chance at a bowl this year it was going to have to be carried by the offense, with Lewerke, Scott, and Corley leading the team.
Corley was really their only proven playmaker at WR, and had All-B1G potential. They will be in a world of hurt without him.
Hopefully if proven guilty he takes accountability, serves the punishment, and gets his life together at another school cause man he had a chance to be special, and an NFL player.
It will be interesting to see what comes of him now.
What a waste.
ESPN is going to hammer this investigation home. Paula Lavigne appears to be the lead ESPN investigator in the matter, which doesn't forcast good things for MSU. She is the same reporter that broke/lead the Baylor investigation from ESPN's point of view.
Bad thing for MSU.
I'm honestly just hoping for justice here. Let the facts come out, and I'll make my judgments then.
In the meantime, I am really curious about what took so long here. Was there tampering of evidence, a desire to let the Title IX investigation get settled, or what?
Long time to charge is pretty common for "he said, she said(s)", or close approximations thereto, which is what this case probably is...unless, of course, there is a video of the crime happening, which has been postulated, then it is a bit curious, but the authorities probably wanted to be cautious in their actions this time after all the mistakes of the past 15-20 years in East Lansing.
Good advice, "Everyone Murders."
They still have a little more attrition after these three. Not a good day in EL! Going to get a little worse on the scholarship front. All the Sparties played the Trustee meeting off as budget and opeations meetings. Yeah, okay......
Nah, the flies at MSU live on the cow turds in the field.
He's going to be a modern Robert Holcombe.
For those who don't remember, Holcombe was an Illinois RB in the mid-90s who got almost 1,000 career carries for some terrible Illinois teams. His junior and senior years combined, Illinois went 2-20, including 0-11 his senior year. He was still highly-regarded enough to be drafted in the 2nd round, but his body was toast after the beating he took in college, and he never did much in the NFL.
Three key rising sophomores.
That's where the plot thickens......you can fall into a deep black well.
"It was not within our mandate to investigate the underlying incidents giving rise to the allegations of sexual assault. Rather, we investigated what members of the football staff
subsequently learned about the incidents, what actions they took upon learning such information, and whether they complied with the RVSM policy."
This staff member subsequently spoke with the three players allegedly involved in the January 2017 incident in order to determine what had occurred, communicated with a parent of one of those players regarding the incident, and failed to report any information he learned to OIE or MSU PD.
We have obtained no evidence that this staff member spoke about the incident or conveyed the information he learned to anyone else at the University, including anyone on the football staff. This staff member was subsequently suspended.
Interesting.