Breaking: Carman rape accusation at Clemson

[CJD]

(05-01-2022, 02:14 PM)fredtoast Wrote: If you believe in "character" then you don't punish someone on baseless allegations.  That is not what people with "character" do.  

Based on everything I read there was clearly evidence in the girl's phone records that cleared Carman. What authority should we have to punish a guy like that?

(05-01-2022, 02:26 PM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: From what I read, it sounded like they were unable to get the phone records from the phone that she had in 2018 because she was unable to recall the number and carrier. She only had a screenshot or two for whatever reason.

If I misunderstood what the article was saying there and they actually did find that 2018 number with the full text records and those records cleared him, then I retract my complaints.

But it sounds more like they just couldn't find evidence necessary to proceed to charging him. Like you said earlier in this thread, it's not unusual for a rape victim to not come forward until it is essentially impossible to get charges or a conviction and that they do tell people close to them. Those details match what happened here.

Like I said, I am not saying he was guilty of this crime and if there are more details that fully exonerate him that the Bengals had access to, so be it. But when building the culture that Zac was building, I find the selection of someone who was investigated for rape (and who definitely had sex with a 15 year old as an 18 year old, which is borderline pedophilic) just bizarre. Jackson isn't some generational talent where you can justify ignoring his red flags because of how talented he is. I just don't see why the risk was taken.

This is what the article said about the phone records:

Quote:On July 1, Collins completed his investigation and submitted the case file to the assistant solicitor, Britni McCall. On Aug. 28, McCall contacted Collins to request follow-up items related to the case. That specific list of items was not included in the case file but, based on Collins’s next steps, one of the requests involved tracking down Doe’s phone records from the time of the incident and from the time she reported to police. Her mom could not remember Doe’s phone number then or the provider, but didn’t think she was on their family plan at the time and said that her daughter had gone through several phones and phone numbers and possibly service providers since then. The mom also said that her daughter had just recently gotten a new number, and she gave that number to Collins. 


Collins called Doe to tell her that the Solicitor’s Office had requested more information, and she said that she did not remember her phone number or service provider from May 2018, either. 


Collins then called back the first friend, whom Doe said she had called from Carman’s bathroom; she gave him the phone number she thought Doe was using in 2018 at the time of the incident. But the number turned out to be the same number from when Doe reported to police in May of 2020. 

On Sept. 15, Collins submitted a search warrant to Doe’s cell phone company for her phone records from May 1, 2020 to May 18, 2020. One day later, on Sept. 16, Solicitor W. Walter Wilkins determined there was insufficient evidence to support criminal charges that could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Wilkins noted the outstanding search warrant and wrote that the case could be resubmitted with that evidence when it became available. 

By that date, Carman had started Clemson’s first game of the 2020 season, a win at Wake Forest. He was never suspended or put on probation. Clemson’s student-athlete handbook for 2020-21 says that a student-athlete will be suspended immediately if arrested for, or criminally charged with criminal sexual conduct, which Carman was not. A spokesperson for Clemson athletics told Defector that shortly before the team left to travel to the season opener at Wake Forest, Clemson Athletics’ designated staff liaison to local police got a phone call that the Solicitor’s Office would not be charging Carman. Defector requested all correspondence between Clemson police and Clemson’s athletic department and football staff regarding Carman, but records pertaining to a student are exempt from disclosure under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), a federal law that protects student education records. 

On March 15, 2021, Sergeant Janet Brock of Clemson police reviewed Doe’s cell phone records from the search warrant and wrote “nothing was found that could corroborate the victim’s statement.” On May 12, the case was officially closed. Defector received a copy of the search warrant cell phone records, but all the information was redacted. 

So they got the phone records from the phone number that she did not have in 2018, so it makes sense that those phone records would not have anything about the rape that occurred in 2018.