Overturned rape case is big, but latest arrest of former Baylor football player is bigger
Sharon Grisby says despite latest news, I hope my alma mater will be better for all this and make good on its promises to fix the problems.
Former Baylor football player Sam Ukwuachu spent part of his free time emailing me after he was released on bail while awaiting appeal on his August 2015 sexual assault conviction.
He wasn’t the best character witness for himself. In his pursuit of claiming innocence, he mostly lashed out with women specific profanity and a measure of anger that far outstripped any other “fan mail” I can recall — and believe me, I’ve gotten some gems.
Among Ukwuachu’s sentiments, but far from the worst: “I hope you all burn in (expletive) hell.”
As it turns out, Ukwuachu was correct in his repeated claims to me that the appeal would go his way.
His conviction was overturned late Wednesday, and he is eligible for a new trial. The McLennan County DA plans to appeal the ruling.
Regardless of Ukwuachu’s long-term fate, it doesn’t change the overall narrative of what happened at Baylor. It was not his conviction — but rather the revelations of shocking laxness in the school’s own investigation into the allegations — that broke open a much bigger and even uglier story.
That’s why I’d maintain that the more significant headline Wednesday was the one that came hours before the Ukwuachu news: Former Baylor football player Tre’Von Armstead was arrested on a sexual assault charge related to a 2013 case in which he was accused of gang-raping a woman after an off-campus party.
Armstead and teammate Shamycheal Chatman were named as suspects in a Waco police report related to the incident. Charges were never filed and the incident stayed under the radar. In 2015, Armstead was kicked off the football team for a “rules violation.”
In January, the woman who reported the gang rape filed a lawsuit against the school. That’s the case that alleges that as many as 31 football players committed 52 acts of rape between 2011 and 2014.
The Armstead arrest — coming almost four years after the reported crime — is “the result of newly discovered evidence and continued investigation,” McLennan County DA Abel Reyna said. And part of that new evidence came from Baylor, which leads me to wonder whether this increased zeal and information sharing will mean more arrests related to pending Baylor cases.
No doubt the Ukwuachu case was the catalyst for Baylor to hire the Pepper Hamilton law firm to review the university’s handling of sexual assault allegation. During the trial, the school’s handling of the original complaint against Ukwuachu came across as shockingly inadequate.
Bethany McCraw, Baylor’s associate dean for student conduct administration, testified that the school investigated the woman’s complaint but didn’t find enough evidence “to move forward.” Yet that decision was based mostly on interviews with the woman and Ukwuachu.
Among the steps the school didn’t take:
Officials didn’t review a report from a nurse who performed the October 2013 sexual assault examination. This nurse testified during the trial that she found signs that the woman had been assaulted.
McCraw’s team didn’t interview a Baylor psychologist, who had multiple counseling sessions with the victim and who diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder because of the alleged assault.
Additionally, Baylor had managed to keep the DA’s developing Ukwuachu case out of the headlines, even after his June 2014 indictment.
Ukwuachu had a standout freshman year at Boise State University, but he was dismissed from the program for violating “unspecified team rules.” The transfer meant he had to sit out the 2013 season. Then, as the 2014 football schedule rolled around, he still didn’t join the team because of what was described only as “some issues.”
So under former coach Art Briles’ football program, a sexual assault indictment equals “some issues.” Makes a person wonder exactly what Briles considered Armstead’s “rules violations” to be.
Ukwuachu’s chance for a new trial hinges on the exclusion from trial evidence of text messages between the woman, who is a former Baylor women’s soccer player, and her friends on the night of the alleged assault from evidence at trial.
The defense claims the texts show the woman’s consent to have sex; the woman’s lawyer says they have nothing to do with consent. The actual messages themselves were not included in the ruling so it would be just a guess as to what will transpire in another trial.
This we know for sure: The Ukwuachu case forced Baylor to look hard at what was happening in its football program and beyond. I hold out hope that my alma mater will be better for all this and make good on its promise to carefully and fully implement Pepper Hamltion’s 105 recommendations.
As for Ukwuachu, I hope he will have the good sense to stay off email.