The rape conviction of a former Baylor football player was overturned Wednesday by a Texas appeals court, and he has been granted a new trial.
Sam Ukwuachu, a defensive end who became one of the antagonists of a vile rape-and-coverup scandal that has blanketed the Big 12 school, was convicted in August 2015 of sexually assaulting a former Baylor women’s soccer player, and sentenced to 180 days in jail plus 10 years of felony probation and 400 hours of community service.
The overturned conviction, by a three-judge panel, hinged on the trial court’s decision not to allow into evidence a series of text messages between the accuser and a friend of hers about her sexual history with Ukwuachu. He said the texts indicated her consent to have sex on the night of the alleged assault in October 2013.
The woman has testified in court: “He was using all of his strength to pull up my dress and do stuff to me. He had me on my stomach on the bed, and he was on top of me. I was screaming ‘stop’ and ‘no.’ ”
“We’re very disappointed to hear the news, mostly because our client has been through so much as it is,” the woman’s attorney, John Clune, told ESPN.
“They [the texts] don’t show anything having to do with consent. We assume the district attorney’s office will appeal this to a higher court.”
The ruling stated, in part: “There was a short break in the messages during the time that the victim stated that the offense occurred and resumed almost immediately thereafter, resulting in the message that the State introduced during the victim’s testimony, where she texted her friend that Ukwuachu had ‘basically raped [her].'”
Ukwuachu, who has maintained his innocence, has been back at Baylor since getting out of prison, amazingly, taking graduate classes. He wrote in an email to ESPN last month: “Im smart enough to know when ive been screwed over and im smart enough to get to the bottom of things and thats what ive been doing for the past year. in the rules of a trial court procedure if there is false evidence/false testimony presented during a defendants trial and there is any reasonable [likelihood] that the false evidence COULD have had an affect on the judgement of the jury the conviction will be overturned.”
Former Baylor football coach Art Briles accepted Ukwuachu as a transfer in 2013 following his dismissal from Boise State in the wake of an alleged domestic violence incident. Ukwuachu was suspended for the 2014 season while Baylor officials conducted an internal investigation into the alleged rape and cleared him of wrongdoing, though the school never made that public.
A recent lawsuit against Baylor claims 31 football players were responsible for at least 52 rapes, including five gang rapes, over a four-year period.