A jury heard from 20 witnesses Tuesday in the case of a former College of William and Mary football player accused of raping an 18-year-old William and Mary athlete at a house party in James City County in November 2012.
By the end of Tuesday, both the prosecution and the defense had finished presenting evidence to the jury. All that’s left is for Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael Gaten and defense attorney William Linka to make their closing arguments before the case is handed to the jury, who will then deliberate before rendering a verdict.
Steve Benedict Casper faces eight felonies and one misdemeanor in connection with the incident, which is alleged to have occurred in the early hours of Nov. 11 at the house he shared with another William and Mary football player, a William and Mary baseball player and a former William and Mary football player.
The trial began Monday, with the jury hearing more than three hours of testimony from the alleged victim in the incident. She said she attended a party at the house — identified by a few witnesses Tuesday as the “football house” — and was waiting outside with her friends to leave when Casper approached her. After they spoke for a few minutes about their respective positions as student-athletes, she said she agreed to follow him in the house.
Both sides in the case agree she ended up in Casper’s bedroom on her own accord. They also seem to agree they began kissing consensually before moving to Casper’s bed. The stories diverge at that point, with the victim saying Casper violently raped and strangled her over the course of a few hours while she “texted for her life” and tried to find an escape.
Casper took the stand Tuesday and said the two kissed for a while before escalating into manual and oral sex. He said he tried to perform oral sex on her for about 20 seconds until she tapped him on the head. He also tried to manually stimulate her, but she rejected those advances. He said he tried to get her to perform oral sex on him once and she rejected him. When he tried to get her to perform oral sex again, he said she quickly left the room.
During his testimony, he repeatedly denied that anything nonconsensual had taken place.
“I don’t know why she would lie about something like this,” Casper said. “It’s a horrible thing she’s doing here.”
He told the jury several times he did nothing to hurt the alleged victim.
Casper and the alleged victim were the only people present in the bedroom. Several William and Mary students who attended the party and were present in the house when the incident is alleged to have occurred testified Tuesday they did not see or hear anything from Casper’s room.
The party was being held for one of Casper’s roommates who was celebrating a birthday. After participating in a football game between William and Mary and Old Dominion University on Nov. 10, Casper and his roommates bought beer, liquor and other party supplies for the house, located on the 4400 block of Powhatan Crossing in the Powhatan Crossing subdivision. People then began showing up to the party, with testimony from witnesses placing the number of attendees between 60 and 100. The alleged victim described the party as being so crowded it was difficult to move through the first floor of the two-story home.
Casper’s three roommates and two of their girlfriends — all of whom were present at the house on the night the incident was alleged to occur — testified they had all gone upstairs as the party was winding down after 1 a.m. Two of the roommates went into their rooms with their respective girlfriends. Around 2 a.m., one of the roommates emerged from his bedroom after his girlfriend went to sleep and met up with the roommate who did not have a girlfriend present and the two ordered pizza. They both said they ate the pizza and hung out in one of the bedrooms adjacent to Casper’s during the time when the incident is alleged to have occurred.
Their testimonies were all linked by the cereal Lucky Charms, which they all testified had been spilled all over the kitchen floor. Linka repeatedly drew their attention to the mess of cereal in the kitchen Tuesday — described by one of the roommates as being an entire family-sized bag of the cereal that was spilled across the floor — without offering a reason for doing so.
Their admission to the jury that they did not hear anything clashed with the alleged victim’s testimony, who said she hit her head on the wall “multiple times” while trying to escape from Casper and that Casper began screaming profanities at her when he inspected a bite wound on his neck she said she inflicted upon him. The roommates and the girlfriends spent much of the time the incident is alleged to have occurred in the bedrooms surrounding Casper’s. Two of them testified the walls were “paper thin.”
Linka presented a photograph of Casper taken the morning after the incident was alleged to have occurred, showing Casper with a pair of hickeys on his neck. One of the roommate’s girlfriends also testified to the presence of the hickeys, saying they were large and noticeable.
On the Sundays following William and Mary football games, the players are required to check in at 9:30 a.m. with the athletic staff so they can be checked for injuries. Senior Associate Athletic Trainer Andy Carter said Tuesday he does not remember if he saw Casper that morning, though Casper testified he showed up that morning and was cut loose after a few minutes as he did not have any apparent injuries. Carter said he never saw any injuries on Casper’s neck near the end of 2012, nor did he ever receive a report of one.
There is little physical evidence in the case. In addition to the photograph of Casper, the alleged victim gave police the dress she wore on the night of the party. She told police she had taken it off shortly after arriving home from the party before depositing it on the floor of her closet, where it remained until she gave it to investigators.
Wendy Cohn, a forensic biologist for the state’s Division of Forensic Science, said she analyzed the dress at the state’s crime lab. There was no evidence of blood or semen or any biological fluids on the dress. She said any of those fluids would remain on the dress for years if the dress had been stored in a dry place. She also said she did not observe any fabric separations on the dress, which the alleged victim said was forcefully removed from her by Casper.
Gaten, the prosecutor, spent much of Tuesday morning drawing testimony from friends and fellow athletes of the alleged victim as well as William and Mary officials who were involved in the situation. He had each of them describe the alleged victim in the two-plus months following the party. Almost all of them talked about how the alleged victim was constantly ripping apart fabric — especially on sweatshirts and hair ties — and how she would almost never make eye contact with anybody.
He had her friends discuss what she was like before the party. She was characterized with terms like “happy” and “always smiling,” while post-party she exhibited what several people described as an abrupt shift in personality. Various levels of the college became involved, including the alleged victim’s resident adviser, the counseling center, associate dean of students and director of student conduct Dave Gilbert, senior assistant dean of students and case manager Donna Haygood-Jackson, and one of the alleged victim’s coaches.
During testimony from the alleged victim’s friends, the resident adviser and Haygood-Jackson, one thing was clear: Nobody wanted to report the incident to the police because it was something they all thought the victim must do. Haygood-Jackson said she reviewed the alleged victim’s options with her, such as off-campus resources like the women’s shelter Avalon. When Haygood-Jackson brought up reporting the incident to the police, she said the alleged victim said she did not know what she wanted to do.
Though the incident is alleged to have occurred Nov. 10, the James City County Police Department did not become involved until Jan. 15 when Investigator Kathy Swanson spoke with the alleged victim. During that meeting, Gilbert said another dean was present as was the alleged victim’s coach. At that meeting, Gilbert said the alleged victim disclosed Casper’s name.
Following her conversation with the alleged victim, Swanson began an investigation that led her to many of the alleged victim’s friends, the residents of the house at Powhatan Crossing, William and Mary athletic staff and Casper.
Linka criticized elements of Swanson’s investigation, such as how she did not secure a search warrant for the house where they party was held, that she did not canvass the Powhatan Crossing neighborhood to ask if any residents saw the alleged victim running away from the house and that she did not ask anyone who said he or she saw bruising on the alleged victim’s body to draw what he or she saw.
During Casper’s testimony, he also talked about a voluntary conversation he had with Swanson at the James City County Law Enforcement Center on Jan. 16, a matter of hours after Swanson left her card at the Powhatan Crossing house. During cross examination, Gaten questioned several of the details Casper provided Swanson during that conversation which were different from what he testified to in court Tuesday.
For example, he initially told Swanson he had been in his bedroom with the alleged victim for 20 minutes. During his testimony Tuesday, he laid out a series of events that had him in the room for much longer. Gaten also took issue with Casper’s depiction of the party to Swanson. During the interview, he said there were “a couple” people at the party before immediately changing that number to around 30. During his testimony Tuesday, he said 100 people were there.
Gaten also challenged Casper’s description of the alleged victim, whom Casper described to Swanson as “some soccer girl” and that “her name wasn’t really all that important at that point.” The alleged victim does not play soccer. After Swanson questioned Casper for more than 30 minutes, he told her that he would have his “detailed story” ready the next day. That night he conferred with his parents and lawyer, who recommended he not say anything.
Charges were taken out March 20. Casper turned himself into the James City County Police on March 27, driving down from his Centreville home in Northern Virginia. He pleaded not guilty to the offenses in May, setting up the jury trial.
He is charged with one count of abduction with intent to defile, one count of rape, one count of forcible sodomy, one count of attempted forcible sodomy, one count of strangulation, one count of sexual battery and three counts of object sexual penetration.
The trial picks up again at 8:30 a.m. today at the Williamsburg-James City County Courthouse.
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