Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic language.
LAWRENCE, Kan. — Terrence Shannon Jr., a University of Illinois men’s basketball star and potential first-round pick in this month’s NBA draft, has been found not guilty of assault sexually assaulted an 18-year-old woman in September at a bar near the university. University of Kansas campus.
The Chicago native stood still as a Douglas County jury returned the unanimous verdict after about 90 minutes of deliberation. Shannon, 23, was found not guilty of rape or other counts of aggravated sexual battery.
His accuser and her friend sat expressionless.
Shannon’s mother, Treanette Redding, put her hand to her face in tears. Later in the hallway, wiping away tears, Redding said she was “relieved” by the verdict.
“The accusations don’t match the person I mentioned,” Redding said. “I knew my son wasn’t capable of something like that. I’m just happy that justice was served.
Shannon left the courthouse without speaking to reporters.
His lawyer, Tricia Bath, called it “a travesty that it has taken this long for justice to be served in this case.” I think the jury returned a correct verdict, but I don’t think we should have ever been here.
Mark Sutter, another defense attorney, added: “Frankly, I think the general public now owes him an apology. I think he gained a lot of weight and was ridiculed in the court of public opinion. But now that the jury of his peers has spoken, I think everyone owes him an apology.
Earlier Thursday, with his parents, stepfather and other relatives in the gallery, Shannon took the stand on the fourth and final day of the trial and flatly denied the allegations stemming from a September trip that he and two other people had traveled to Lawrence to attend an Illini-Jayhawks game. football game.
“I never touched, caught, stopped. … That didn’t happen,” Shannon told the jury.
In his closing arguments, Senior Deputy Prosecutor Ricardo Leal said the case came down to two students: one, a “typical” college student who went with his girlfriend to a bar, even though he didn’t like crowds or drinking, because that’s what students do; the other, an “atypical” star college athlete who “might as well be the king of the University of Illinois.”
“When he wants something,” Leal said, “he gets it.”
Sutter spent his closing arguments trying to dismantle a case he called a “travesty” and a police investigation by a Lawrence police detective that Sutter said did not deserve to be called such.
“Two things are not debatable,” Sutter told jurors. “Simple scientific data shows that Terrence Shannon Jr. is not responsible for this crime, and no effort has been made to find the guilty perpetrator of this crime.”
Jurors began deliberating shortly before 2 p.m. They returned with a verdict shortly after 3:30 p.m.
The state’s case largely centered on testimony from Shannon’s accuser and her best friend, who were with her the night of the alleged encounter at a bar in the basement of the Jayhawk Café called the Martini Room .
The 18-year-old told jurors she and her friend were heading out that evening when she spotted a cute boy waving at her. He was tall, she said, had different colored dreadlocks and wore a mustard yellow shirt.
With her friend’s encouragement, they re-entered the bar around 12:15 a.m. That’s when she said the man grabbed her and pulled her toward him. She said she thought they would talk and exchange phone numbers or Snapchats. Instead, she said no words were exchanged. With a drink in one hand and a phone in the other, both arms pressed close to her chest, she said she stared straight ahead as she felt the man’s hand reach under her skirt until to his buttocks.
“I was really uncomfortable,” she told jurors. “I don’t know why I didn’t leave. But I would have liked to do it.
Then, she said, she felt his hand move her underwear to the side and a finger inside her vagina for what she estimated was no more than 10 seconds.
“I didn’t react,” she said. “All I did was stand there in shock.”
Black-and-white surveillance footage from the Martini Room played during the trial appeared to show Shannon and the woman moments before — but not during — the alleged encounter.
When it was over, she said, she pushed her way through the crowd to leave and look for her friend. The two men eventually left the bar. At that point, she said, she was too hysterical to drive.
The woman said she returned to her apartment around 1:15 a.m. Saturday and began searching for the man’s identity. She remembered the man standing at the bar next to a KU basketball player. She finally identified Shannon, she said, after searching online for photos of the KU and Illinois football and basketball teams.
She didn’t immediately call the police, she said, fighting back tears, “because I didn’t want to end up here.”
She and her friend told police that same Saturday about the alleged sexual assault, then went to a Lawrence hospital, where a sexual assault nursing exam kit was recovered. The two men eventually returned to the Martini Room later that night, according to testimony from a computer forensics expert who, acting on a defense subpoena, extracted data from the woman’s friend’s phone .
Phone records also showed a group chat thread in December involving the two women and their two other roommates, including the best friend’s sister. The exchange included a link to an ESPN article about Shannon’s suspension from the Illini men’s team following the rape accusation, and a message from the friend’s sister that said “got caught ass,” followed by two emojis with dollar signs for eyes and money for tongues.
The testimony does not mention any response from the 18-year-old to this message.
The trial featured testimony from two forensic pathologists, one from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, the other privately retained by the defense, whose analysis and interpretation of DNA in the case resulted in somewhat different conclusions.
Both agreed that no male DNA was detected in swabs taken from the 18-year-old’s vagina and genital area.
The KBI medical examiner wrote in her report that swabs taken from the inside and outside of the crotch of the woman’s underwear revealed an “insufficient amount of male DNA” for testing, although she told jurors Wednesday those levels were essentially too low to be conclusive. if it was even DNA.
But the defense medical examiner called the report’s reference to male DNA a “highly misleading statement.”
Using a different threshold than the KBI, the defense scientist also concluded “with scientific certainty” that Shannon’s DNA was not in a sample taken from the 18-year-old’s buttocks.
The lack of DNA evidence, Sutter said in his closing arguments, “blows the case out of the water.”
He also chastised police for failing to interview possible witnesses and another suspect who had been charged with a similar crime two weeks earlier at the same location in Martini Room where Shannon’s accuser said she had been attacked.
“This is not our burden,” Sutter told jurors, “and yet after studying this case and listening to the testimony, I think you will all agree that we have proven that it was not Terrence Shannon Jr. “
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.