Jameis Winston DNA Results Match Sample Taken From Complainant; Why Isn't His Defense Worried?
ByTests on DNA provided by Jameis Winston against a sample collected from the alleged victim's underwear from the night of the reported sexual assault are a match.
ESPN reported seeing a copy of the DNA test results Wednesday night and said the odds of the match not being to Winston would be one in 2.2 trillion. Tim Jansen, attorney for the Florida State University (FSU) Seminoles quarterback, said he was not surprised by the match, but by the leaked DNA results.
"We are not surprised with the results of the DNA," Jansen said Thursday in a press conference, according to USA Today.
"We voluntarily submitted to a DNA, the only thing we are surprised by is it was leaked out by law enforcement," he said. "The question the people should ask is why is it being leaked? For what purpose?"
Jansen also said his client and the alleged victim had consensual sex that night, which was part of their defense strategy all along.
"I don't think it's a secret what the defense is when I tell you that we are not surprised his DNA was found," Jansen said. "We anticipated it would be found. We never, ever said he wasn't there."
Both sides have now at least confirmed beyond doubt that Winston and the alleged victim were together the night/early morning of Dec. 7, 2012, when she filed a police report of sexual violence.
The alleged victim reported the assault hours after it happened and was taken to a hospital, where nurses performed what is known as a "rape kit." It is standard procedure when someone comes in and reports or was evidently a victim of sexual violence. The kit is a collection of physical evidence, like DNA swabs from the attacker(s).
The case became public Wednesday, Nov. 13 when TMZ published their report with a copy of a heavily redacted police report. Ever since, small pieces of information have leaked to the media.
Just before the story broke, the Tallahassee Police Department (TPD) had handed the case over to the office of William Meggs, state attorney for the Second Judicial Circuit. Before that, Tampa Bay Times reporter Matt Barker and a TMZ reporter began asking about the sexual assault police report, not knowing it was Winston attached to the investigation.
The alleged victim named Winston as her attacker to the FSU police in January, a month after filing the report. Occurring off-campus, the FSU police handed it over the TPD, who then declared the case open, but inactive after the alleged victim reportedly stopped responding to police, according to emails from one Tallahassee city official to a group of others.
The family of the alleged victim provided the Tampa Bay Times with a statement through their attorney (all names kept anonymous to protect identities) on Wednesday. They said a TPD detective warned the young woman that since Tallahassee was "a big football town," the case would be highly publicized. The statement also said their intent was to keep the complaint as private and low-profile as possible, while also questioning some aspects of Jansen and his defense of Winston.
In February, Jansen said he was alerted about the case, but though it was being closed, since the complainant was not actively pressing charges. When the case resurfaced, she reportedly started cooperating with investigators.
Now Meggs is tasked with deciding on how to proceed in the case. He will weigh all evidence, medical records and testimonies he and his office can compile before making his decision.
"Everybody wants to know what's going on," Meggs said earlier Wednesday. "So do we. We're in the process of trying to figure out what's going on. We haven't determined how it's going to turn out."