Jones rape case goes to jury

The panel that began deliberating the fate of the former Gophers football player has asked to look at cell phone images that show the alleged sexual assault.

By ROCHELLE OLSON, Star Tribune

Last update: April 9, 2008 - 9:30 PM

The jury deciding the fate of former Gopher football star Dominic Jones will get another look at the crucial 30-second cell phone video, frame-by-frame, today.

Jurors asked to review the video late Wednesday, and Hennepin County District Judge Marilyn Rosenbaum granted the request over the strenuous objection of defense lawyer Earl Gray.

"The case is over, you can't start giving these jurors exhibits now," Gray protested.

Deliberations began at mid-afternoon Wednesday. Jones, 21, is accused of raping a woman who prosecutors say was too drunk to consent. The cell phone video, showing Jones masturbating over the woman, was recorded by football player Alex Daniels and deleted, but retrieved by the U.S. Secret Service.

In closing arguments Gray spoke of his client's right to be presumed innocent. He said the prosecution "failed miserably" to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

"Don't you see how they're torturing the evidence to convict this man and for what reason? Because he's a Gopher football player? Because they have a video that doesn't show a crime," Gray bellowed. "This whole thing is a joke."

In contrast, Assistant Hennepin County Martha Holton Dimick spoke slowly in a voice bordering on monotone, at one point mocking Gray's style by saying she wouldn't "yell" at the jury.

She wrapped up her argument by projecting on a split screen the faces of Jones and the young woman from the video. He was smiling. She showed no emotion and had a white substance on and around her mouth, around her nose and on her closed eyes.

The woman was "unconscious when the defendant, a complete stranger to her, raped her," Dimick said.

According to testimony, the woman, who was 18 then, went to an apartment shared by four football players and got into a shot-for-shot vodka drinking contest with former player Robert McField. McField outweighed her by at least 100 pounds. The woman said she passed out on the couch and doesn't recall anything until she woke up sober and with a headache in the morning.

As he has done before, Gray attacked McField's credibility because he is serving a sentence for armed robbery in Missouri. His former roommates, Daniels, Keith Massey and E.J. Jones, were not charged or called to testify, although the woman had sex with all three that evening after drinking. The earlier sex was not introduced in Jones' trial.

Of the sex seen in the video, Gray said, "You're not here to moralize. You're not here to set standards of conduct for college kids. You're not to let that overwhelm you with bias because it disturbs you."

For the first time in the trial, Dimick said that Jones must have inserted himself into the woman's mouth because a white substance is dripping from her face. She called his assertion that the sex was consensual "ludicrous."

"Maybe [the woman] didn't use the best judgment that night. So what?" Dimick said. "Just because a woman has too much to drink doesn't make her fair game for anyone out there who wants to rape her."

To prove third-degree criminal sexual conduct, prosecutors must show that intercourse or oral sex occurred and the defendant knew or had reason to know the woman was physically helpless. The jury will also determine whether Jones committed criminal sexual conduct in the fourth degree. Instead of penetration, prosecutors need to prove "non-consensual sexual contact."

Gray said prosecutors have no evidence that his client ever inserted himself into the woman's mouth. In the video, he is stroking himself, not touching the woman's mouth or face. "The video has no support for penetration," Gray said. "You have to presume that didn't happen."

Rochelle Olson • 612-673-1747

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