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No charges in FSU quarterback rape case

Posted at 1:49 PM, Dec 05, 2013
and last updated 2013-12-05 14:09:28-05
(CNN) –Almost a year after a Florida State University student first accused quarterback Jameis Winston of rape, the state attorney for Lee County, Florida,  announced no charges would be made.

Asked why no charges would be filed, Lee County State Attorney Willie Meggs said, “We have a duty as prosecutors to only file … charges if we have a reasonable likelihood of a conviction.”

“We did not feel we could meet that burden.”

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Lee County State Attorney Willie Meggs announced the press conference earlier Thursday. Winston’s attorney, Tim Jansen, said he also did not know what would happen.

The woman said Lee, quarterback of the Florida Seminoles football team, raped her in December. According to police documents, the woman told investigators she was drinking with friends at a bar called Potbellys. They later left her after consuming several shots, according to the documents.

She said she does not remember much of what happened next, but told investigators she remembered winding up in a ground-floor apartment where a man took off her clothes and had sex with her despite her objections.

The woman came forward a month later to accuse Winston, but Tallahassee’s interim police Chief, Tom Coe, said last week that she “broke off contact” with investigators in February and at the time no longer wanted to go forward with the case.

The woman’s family has said that a detective had warned her attorney that Tallahassee is a “big football town” and that her life could be miserable if she pursued the case.

The case resurfaced after media outlets made public records requests for the initial complaint.

Last month, Winston’s attorney announced his client and the woman had consensual sex. The woman’s family shot back saying, “To be clear, the victim did not consent. This was rape.”

The-CNN-Wire
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