State prosecutors are interesting the sexual assault case in opposition to Garrett Lee Holsen, a midshipman on the Naval Academy acquitted of raping a classmate throughout an off-campus social gathering.
Holsen, 21, was discovered not responsible of second-degree rape in September following a six-day trial in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court docket. Although a number of witnesses testified that he had intercourse with a closely intoxicated midshipman after the 2021 Herndon Monument Climb, a jury finally sided with Holsen, who stated the girl did not appear drunk and consented to the encounter.
In a Could 1 submitting, the Workplace of the Lawyer Basic requested the Appellate Court docket of Maryland to enter a mistrial for the second-degree assault and third-degree intercourse offense expenses on which the jury didn’t render a verdict in September. Throughout final 12 months’s trial, following an argument by protection legal professional Peter O’Neill suggesting the counts have been redundant, Anne Arundel Circuit Decide Robert Thompson ordered the jury to not search verdicts for the 2 counts in the event that they acquitted Holsen of rape.
Following county prosecutors’ objections to that call, Assistant Lawyer Basic Jer Welter will deal with the state’s case for the attraction. The legal professional common’s workplace declined to remark Thursday night.
As an alternative of O’Neill, who’s a trial legal professional, Holsen is being represented by Greenbelt legal professional Megan Coleman.
“Our place is that the jury’s verdict of acquittal on the second-degree rape cost meant that the jury essentially determined a necessary truth in Mr. Holsen’s favor: that the complaining witness was not bodily helpless or mentally incapacitated on the time that the acts occurred between them,” Coleman stated in an announcement.
The appellee’s temporary is due on the finish of Could. No oral argument has but been scheduled.
A midshipman and Wisconsin native, Holsen initially confronted a fourth-degree intercourse offense cost as properly, although Anne Arundel prosecutors agreed to drop it.
On the time, earlier than jury deliberations, the county’s prosecution crew argued every cost stemmed from “separate and distinct” acts and needs to be thought of on their particular person circumstances.
“This isn’t an if then cease difficulty,” they stated in the course of the trial. “These are separate crimes with separate parts.”
Describing consent as “the massive enchilada for the jury,” nevertheless, Thompson dismissed the county’s objections and gave the jury its directions.
Within the legal professional common’s appellant temporary, state prosecutors contend the choose’s resolution to acquire an “all or nothing” verdict was incorrect and requested for oral arguments to proceed on an attraction.
An attraction wouldn’t overturn Holsen’s rape acquittal — the double jeopardy precept from frequent legislation marks acquittals as ultimate even when they’re “primarily based on a mistake of legislation or a mistake of truth.” Quite, the legal professional common’s workplace is in search of a verdict on what it described as the 2 “open counts”: second-degree assault and third-degree intercourse offense.
This month’s attraction got here practically two years after Holsen’s encounter together with his classmate.
In keeping with court docket paperwork, the midshipmen turned shut mates throughout their plebe 12 months. Although they have been by no means intimately concerned, Holsen stated he noticed their relationship growing right into a deeper, extra romantic connection.
On Could 23, 2021, following that 12 months’s Herndon Monument Climb — an annual teamwork custom that befell Wednesday on the academy — they met off campus at an Airbnb social gathering on Colonial Avenue. A lot of September’s trial was targeted on how intoxicated or sober the girl was when she and Holsen had intercourse in an upstairs toilet.
After one of many lady’s mates confronted them, the midshipman silently sobbed, saying, “I do not know the way he received in. I do not know what’s occurring. I did not need him to, I did not need him to,” the pal testified.
A number of character witnesses have been known as on Holsen’s behalf to testify about his respect towards girls. O’Neill additionally challenged the integrity of the accuser, noting inconsistencies in testimony and citing an unrelated honor code violation in opposition to her for plagiarism.
At one level, O’Neill described the investigation in opposition to his shopper as “embarrassing,” saying in his closing argument, “it needs to be scary to all of us.”
A Pentagon report on sexual assaults on the Army, Navy and Air Power academies confirmed an 18% leap in incidents reported by college students in the course of the 2021-22 college 12 months — the Naval Academy in Annapolis had practically double the variety of reviews in 2021 because it did in 2002.
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