A Former Football Star Was Accused Of Sexual Assault. It Took A Jury Less Than 2 Hours To Find Him Not Guilty.

Shawn Oakman, a former football star at Baylor University who was once considered a top NFL pick, was found not guilty of sexually assaulting a woman with whom he had a previous sexual relationship.

Oakman had been accused by a woman of sexually assaulting her in 2016 when she was allegedly too drunk to consent. The woman, who doesn’t get named because she claims to be the victim of sexual assault, said she was drinking before going to Cricket’s, a bar in downtown Waco, TX. She said she and friends then went to Scruffy Murphy’s, a bar near Baylor. She then texted Oakman, whom she had a previous sexual relationship with the year before, and asked him to meet her there. He did.

A friend of Oakman’s said that around closing time at the bar, he asked the former Baylor defensive end what he was going to do next, to which Oakman responded while gesturing toward the woman, “Sh**, her.” Oakman’s friend, according to the Waco Tribune-Herald, said the woman “grinned and hugged Oakman like she was proud Oakman acknowledged publicly that they were together.” She had apparently discussed her previous sexual relationship with Oakman while she was a senior at Baylor. The two parted, remaining friends.

The couple then walked back to Oakman’s duplex apartment. She claimed to be so drunk he had to hold her up while opening the door. She testified that her friends texted her while she accompanied Oakman back to his apartment, but she assured them she was fine.

She would later claim Oakman sexually assaulted her twice that night and that she now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression. Two of her friends testified she has been negatively affected by the encounter, the Tribune-Herald reported.

One of Oakman’s attorneys, Alan Bennett, told the Tribune-Herald that the accuser’s testimony “was just not believable on so many points.” He also told the paper Oakman’s DNA was found in the accuser’s mouth, which he said suggested a consensual encounter, and that officers and a nurse offered conflicting testimony about how drunk the woman was the night of the encounter.

Jessi Freud, Oakman’s other attorney, told the Tribune-Herald the jury “paid attention to the fact that there was no corroborating evidence to anything” the accuser said.

“There was just nothing to corroborate what she said because what she said was not true,” Freud told the paper. “This was always a consensual encounter.”

As for Oakman, he told reporters he felt “truly blessed, blessed by God, blessed by my family and by everybody who has supported me these three years,” after the “not guilty” verdict was read. He said he plans to get a tattoo to commemorate the event.

“I’m feeling like a million bucks,” he told reporters. “But it never was about me. It was about everybody who was around me. They slandered my name, they fired my coach. I felt like all that was on me. I was a leader of Baylor, of Waco, of the community that I was in and they took us down from the top.”

“They took the best player off the field and they took the best coach out of the Big 12. We are coming to get everything back because everything is ours and it never should have been taken away. We built this program from the bottom up, and they tarnished it. They said we was this, they said we was that. But they all taught us better. Coach Briles, Judge Starr, they taught us better. We are not animals,” he added.

He was referring to the ongoing sex assault scandal engulfing Baylor, which led to the firing of head football coach Art Briles and Baylor president Ken Starr.