New developments in alleged MSU sexual assault

There have been several new developments in the story of the alleged sexual assault by two MSU basketball players, which we first reported last Wednesday, that shed more light on the situation and raise many important questions that we are attempting to answer with the help of legal experts.

On Friday, Ingham County Prosecutor Stuart Dunnings III released the full transcript of the police interview with one of the two players, the same one who is cited in the police report as being cooperative and wanting to give his side of the story. Along with that transcript, Dunnings included a cover letter explaining the reasons why his office chose not to file charges in the case.

The interview transcript does appear to add a fair amount of ambiguity to the information contained in the police report, which contains paraphrases of what was said during the police interview. But that ambiguity also seems to cut both ways, allowing people to reach opposite conclusions about whether it supports or diminishes the credibility of the victim’s story.

We have asked several experts with a diverse range of experiences — rape victim advocates, former prosecutors, and defense attorneys — to examine the police report and the transcript and offer an independent analysis of several questions: Should charges have been filed based on that evidence or not? Should the DA’s office have done more investigation in order to clear up some of the ambiguous or contradictory information between the statements by the victim and one of the alleged assailants? Should the police have done more to clear up those issues with more detailed questioning before forwarding their recommendations to the prosecutor’s office? We will publish a full examination of those issues by those experts as soon as we have all of their responses in.

Some have suggested that Dunnings has a poor track record of bringing prosecutions in sexual assault cases, but our research does not support that contention. We looked at the data from 2008 and 2009 (prior to that, the standards for reporting were different so we stuck to the last two years) for Ingham County and eight other counties in the area and found that Dunnings’ record stacks up well against other prosecutors.

We compared the data on the number of sexual assaults reported to the police to the number of arrest warrants issued by the prosecutors in each county. In 2008, Dunnings led the way with a 21.2 percent rate of bringing charges in sexual assault cases. In 2009, he was in third place among nine with 18.1 percent. So the data do not support the accusation that Dunnings does not take sexual assault cases seriously.

But that data does raise larger questions that go well beyond Ingham County. Is the 20 percent prosecution rate that is the norm for sexual assault cases larger or smaller than the prosecution rate for other serious crimes? Studies show that rape is one of the most under-reported crimes, yet even when it is reported only about 1 in 5 cases result in charges being brought.

There are any number of possible explanations for that number, many of which have nothing at all to do with how well any prosecutor does their job. Again, we’ve asked experts to weigh in on this matter and to offer analysis on the reasons why there is such a low prosecution — much less conviction — rate in such cases and what might be done to bring justice in a higher percentage of cases.

There are a number of other angles to this story, and to the larger issue of sexual assault on college campuses and in the nation as a whole, and we continue to work on exploring all of the important questions being raised.