The attorney of Jameis Winston's sexual assault accuser, Patricia Carroll, held a press conference Friday afternoon, addressing alleged inconsistencies and failures by the Tallahassee Police Department in the investigation.
Attorney calls for state to independently investigate Jameis Winston case
Patricia Carroll claims multiple failures by the state and the Tallahassee Police Department in the sexual assault investigation.
Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
Winston was accused in December 2012 of the crime. State Attorney Willie Meggs announced in November 2013 that no charges would be filed.
Carroll called for the state Attorney General to launch an independent investigation into this case and Tallahassee Police Department [update: TPD defends its work]. Carroll said the accuser is not considering civil litigation at this time.
Update:
Gov. Scott's spokewoman says Meggs and FDLE did thorough investigation of Winston case and concluded no further action is required.
— jennifer portman (@jmportman) December 13, 2013 “If victims are subjected on an ongoing basis to what this victim was subject to,” Patricia Carroll said, “there is a serious problem in the state of Florida.”
She alleged the state’s medical records don’t match up with family medical records, notably information including injuries suffered from the alleged incident that were absent from the records released by the state.
Carroll said she asked the state to test blood from the victim for rape drugs, and the state refused to do so.
The full documents release by Carroll:
Carroll also accused Meggs of focusing the investigation not on the rape suspect, but instead on the rape victim. Specifically, she brought up Meggs’ insistence on bringing up the accuser’s consensual partner, which Carroll said would be inadmissable in court.
She noted four pages of the state’s documentation concerned the accuser’s boyfriend, which included information Carroll deemed unnecessary. She suggested that this information was included in order to lead people to believe that because both Winston and the accuser’s boyfriend were African-American football players, the sex was consensual.
Part of the state's ground for dismissal was based on witness statements, which Carroll questioned, partially due to the fact that the two witnesses were teammates of Winston's. She also claimed inconsistent statements from Chris Casher, and argued that his claim that he taped the encounter should be an admission of guilt to a crime.
The attorney also said the state failed to try to obtain phone records from witnesses, even though those records would’ve been available into December of this year, and that the police department repeatedly failed to record interviews and conversations with the alleged victim.
Carroll also said that after she originally asked police to get DNA from Winston, they declined due to a fear of making the case public, but then filed for a search warrant of the accuser, which the attorney called an “adversarial move.”
While she stopped short of accusing the police department of malicious behavior, Carroll said that the motivation of protecting a Florida State football player was a “conclusion one can reasonably draw.”
More from SB Nation college football:
• Interactive bowl season calendar with picks and links to more coverage
See More:
