Cuz it's all criminal today...
The Rap Sheet
Crimes, misdemeanors and eligibility-crippling issues legal, academic, institutional and otherwise.
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Filmed, by a teammate whose creative vision cannot be suppressed by law, custom or simple decency, Minnesota cornerback Dominic Jones, who was charged Monday with third-degree criminal sexual conduct - rape - based on a cell phone video that showed him "in a sex act with a woman who was 'physically helpless'" back in April. Alleged cameraman: running back turned defensive end Alex Daniels.
The Minneapolis Star has a detailed PDF of the charging document, wherein the 18-year-old victim is described as "real drunk, like really, really drunk" after a drinking contest at an apartment shared by several players. Highlights of the contest included the girl throwing back at least eight shots of straight Karkov vodka, after which roommates Daniels, Keith Massey and E.J. Jones - the players initially charged and released back in April, and the first two high school teammates of Dominic Jones back in Ohio - took her into a bedroom and "took turns having sex with her." E.J. Jones, apparently last in line, needed help getting the girl to a bathroom, where "she fell off the tolet stool and hit her head on the bathtub" and was moved to a couch. From there, it seems, she was passed out until "another dude" - Dominic Jones - arrived and was spotted by fourth roommate having sex with the unconscious girl in a bedroom and committing acts captured by Daniels' phone (these are described raw and uncensored in the linked document). The fourth, seemingly sympathetic/cooperative roommate is identified as "R.M." and specified as a Minnesota football player, but the only member of the current Minnesota roster with those initials seems like such an unlikely accomplice from his bio that I'm not even going to mention his name until it appears somewhere else.
Vodka: Ugh. Careful with that.
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Arrested, after an argument with his girlfriend over cab fare, Wisconsin running back Lance Smith, "tentatively charged" Saturday with false imprisonment, robbery and battery. Per the Madison Capital-Journal:
The woman told police that during the dispute, Smith -- whose legal name is Smith-Williams -- would not let her out of his North Randall Street apartment and pushed her down as she tried to leave.
Smith then told the woman to go to a nearby convenience store to get change for a $20 bill, but allegedly followed her, still arguing, and pushed her down in the store, the woman told police.
As she fell, the woman dropped the $20 bill and Smith allegedly picked up the cash and took her shoes, DeSpain said.
Her shoes? Who is he, Ed Wood? Smith remains in jail and as formal charges pend and the athletic department does the relevant gathering of facts.
Charged, Georgia walk-on Paul "Tripp" Taylor, in a brawl in which he and "several other college kids" are accused of stripping a student, beating him and urinating on him during Memorial Day, uh, festivities. A former player from Murray State, Shane McCleskey, was also charged in the fight, which reportedly included some poor, underaged soul being hit in the face with a baseball bat.
Alcohol "may have contributed" to the fracas which you would assume even before "a large number of beer cans were found at the scene," but the portrait of the jock as a young, testosterone-driven alpha jerk comes into play, as well: a couple high school kids who we gather are not the athletic type were whittling or something ("cutting a piece of wood with a pocketknife"), minding their business, when, per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
When [victim Charles] Rogers told the men to leave his friend alone, they punched him in the face. The two teens were able to pull themselves away and were walking to their car, when a group of eight men confronted them.
The 16-year-old was hit in the face with a baseball bat and kicked and punched, authorities said.
Rogers tried to run into some nearby woods. Several men dragged him out, stripped him of his shorts, and severely beat him before urinating on him.
"I thought it would never stop," Rogers said Monday.
The men finally let him go but with a warning: "Keep your mouth shut, or else," Rogers recounted.
Injuries included an orbital fracture and, you know, the extreme indignity of being pissed upon.
Georgia's offseason has been a rough one, but these alleged acts of violence and disgust fall somewhat beyond the evil of underage drankin'. Though that was part of the equation, too: Taylor is only 20, so if those beer cans come back to him, he's in real trouble.
Arrested, Brandon Fanney, the third Alabama player nabbed in last weekend's Tuscaloosa night club fracas. It should be immediately noted that Fanney's charge, a piddly disorderly conduct that kept him locked up for about two seconds before he posted the $300 bond, falls well short of the intrigue of the accusations - mischief, resisting arrest, providing a false name and, on the sketchier end, reported patrol car headbutting - levied against teammates Roy Upchurch and Brandon Deaderick, who know how to throw down and attempt to push it off onto somebody else ("They don't know my name! They'll never know!") when the time comes.
Injured, in a car accident that earned fellow Miami freshman Jermaine McKenzie a ticket for reckless driving, hot shot 'Cane quarterback recruit Robert Marve, whose left (nonthrowing! Whew - ed.) hand was injured in the resulting crash when McKenzie fell asleep on an all-night drive Sunday/Monday, according to the latter's statements to police. Marve's high school coach told the Miami Herald that Marve had successful surgery to "clean out" a disfigured finger and cuts and the like, and sophomore UM linebacker Colin McCarthy left the hospital with no apparent injuries.