Fox Sports is reporting that Florida State administrators and Tallahassee police took steps to both hide and then hamper the criminal investigation of star quarterback Jameis Winston last fall.
Winston of course was never charged with a crime in the case, but the Fox Sports findings suggest that the entire investigation was covered up by a title hungry university with some help from campus and city police.
After learning in December 2013 that charges wouldn’t be filed, FOX Sports examined thousands of pages of documents. Among those findings, it was revealed that when Tallahassee police caught wind that a reporter was looking into the alleged rape, they turned reports in the case over to Florida State administrators. By November of 2013, nearly a year after a woman alleged that Winston raped her and nine months after Tallahassee police shelved the case, the Florida State administrators had those documents.
FOX Sports has also learned that the Tallahassee police forwarded reports to the Florida State police chief. He then forwarded them to a high-ranking administrator in the university’s athletics department.
Reports then ended up in the hands of Winston’s attorney, Tim Jansen. Jansen was able to question two key witnesses in the case before the state attorney was even notified of the allegation against Winston and launched his own investigation.
How else can you explain the reports of police running interference with reporters for the university.
— The second-highest ranking officer in the campus police department ran interference with another reporter seeking information about the allegations, terming them a “rumor” that he was glad he could “dispel.”
— Both of those police officials were involved in updating Florida State administrators on the case and helping formulate the school’s public relations response in the first days after the explosive story became public.
Florida State released a statement Friday defending itself in the handling of the sexual assault investigation, by breaking down their own timeline of events.
The university said in a statement it was publicly releasing the series of events that have transpired since the incident in December 2012 because of “misinformation in the media.” The university did not name Winston in the release, but referred to allegations against “a prominent athlete.”
Florida State said the only people aware of the incident before January 2013 were Tallahassee police, campus police and the victims advocate program. The decision not to seek charges was made after Winston’s lawyer said the Tallahassee Police Department was “no longer pursuing the case,” and Winston and his roommates said the sex was consensual.
Jameis Winston will be long gone to the NFL before this is completely resolved.