Jurors acquitted a 30-year-old predatory offender of rape after he was accused of grabbing a woman from her Minneapolis front porch last summer and assaulting her.
Tyree T. Johnson, of Crystal, was found not guilty by a Hennepin County District Court jury last week of two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and kidnapping.
Jurors did convict Johnson of misdemeanor assault. He is scheduled to be sentenced on March 11.
Johnson's accuser said that he grabbed her near her home in the 300 block of N. Newton Avenue and dragged her to a church parking lot, where the rape allegedly occurred.
Surveillance video shown during the trial showed the woman walking from her porch and returning about 45 minutes later.
Johnson testified that he did have sex with the woman, but that it was consensual. Later they argued and he punched her in the face, he testified.
The woman did have facial injuries, and those were evidence behind the misdemeanor assault count that resulted in a guilty verdict.
At the time of the encounter, Johnson was under intensive court-supervised release and registered with the state as a predatory offender following his conviction in Hennepin County adult court for a rape when he was 15 years old. He was sentenced to a nearly 16-year term and served more than 10 years in prison.
