Nearly a year after Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston was accused of sexual assault, a state attorney announced in December he would face no charges. Yet from the beginning, there were questions about whether police, either out of deference to the football team or through astounding incompetence, dropped the ball on the investigation.
A stunning deep dive by Walt Bogdanich in Wednesday's New York Times concludes the investigation wasn't just botched, but rather that "there was virtually no investigation at all, either by the police or the university."
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* Police didn't pull security camera footage from the local bar where Winston's accuser said she met him and two other men. The state attorney would do so 11 months later, after the tapes had been reused.
* Even after the accuser identified Winston in class, police waited two more weeks before contacting him — by phone. Winston said he had baseball practice and would call back later; his lawyer then called for him and said he wouldn't talk.
* The lead detective, Scott Angulo, was a booster for a $150 million nonprofit that funds FSU football. He waited two months to file his first report, and closed the case at the time without even getting a DNA sample from Winston.
The university, too, apparently failed to follow proper investigative procedures after the athletic department learned of the incident. And it failed to follow up on a witness' admission he'd filmed the sexual encounter. (Winston admits to the encounter, but claims it was consensual.)
Again, Winston has never been charged and must be presumed innocent. But the baffling failures by the police and university look terrible in light of quotes like this one, from Chief Assistant State Attorney Georgia Cappleman: "I believe that Mr. Winston cannot be convicted. I don't necessarily believe that he's innocent."
Read the entire story here.
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