Ben McLemore, ex NBA Lottery Pick, declared guilty of rape-nbc Sports Philadelphia
The former NBA player Ben Mclermore was stated that he had raped a 21 -year -old woman during a Lake House party attended by many of his then teammates from Portland Trail Blazer, a jury governed on Thursday.
The jury in the County of Clackamas, located directly south of Portland, considered Mclermore, 32 years old, guilty of rape, illegal sexual penetration and a counting of sexual abuse. It was declared not guilty for another count of sexual abuse, the Portland KGW television station reported.
The sentence was scheduled for Wednesday.
“We recognize that there are those who fear that people with celebrity status or a position of importance can avoid the accusation. Not in the County of Clackamas. This case shows that my office proceeds criminal acts regardless of the state of the crime community,” said the district prosecutor John Wentworth in a note.
The accusations derive from a party on October 3, 2021, on Lake Ospego Home owned by his teammate of Trail Blazer Robert Covington.
Public ministries said during the trial that the sexual meeting was rape, while Mclermore’s lawyer contrasted was the consensual sex.
The woman said she was incapacitated after a night of heavy drinks and was unable to give consent. The public ministries sent photos of the woman in the balance on a bathroom and then passed out on a sofa, according to what reported by Oregonian/Oregon Live.
He said he woke up at some point during rape and frozen in terror.
“I don’t know who this person is,” he testified. “This is a random person who is doing something like that.” The Associated Press generally does not identify the victims of sexual aggressions.
At a certain point, he said he let his body slip on the ground in an attempt to stop the assault. The woman witnessed McCamore pulled her back on the sofa and continued.
Covington previously witnessed that he saw the woman flirting with Mclermore as they sat on a sofa.
Mclermore testified that he was also drinking, but said that sex was consensual. He also said he and the woman did not have a conversation before, during or after the act, after which he immediately left the house.
One of his lawyers, Kris Winemiller, said that Mclermore started after receiving an angry message from this then wife, who tracked him down and wanted to know why he was not in their home in Lake Ospego.
The County Prosecutor of Clackamas, Scott Healy, said there is no confusion. “When you look at all the surrounding circumstances and evaluate the tests in this case, I claim that the accused is guilty,” he said during the closing discussions on Tuesday.
Another defense lawyer, Lisa Maxfield, supported Mclermore’s acquittal.
“The only reasonable verdict in one case in which two people get drunk and have sex and the man is drunk with the woman, the only reasonable verdict in such a case is not guilty,” he said.
The woman said she did not hire a lawyer to sue Mclermore and did not look for money from him. Instead he pursued the criminal proceeding because “you can’t do it to someone, let alone someone you don’t know”.
McLemore, who played college at Kansas, was the seventh choice in the 2013 draft of the Kings sacrament. He also played for Memphis, Houston and Los Angeles Lakers before his last season NBA with Portland in 2021-2022.
Since then, he has played in Europe and China. Last August signed with a team in Türkiye.
The resources for the victims of sexual attacks are available through the National Sexual Violence Resources Center and the National Telephone Hotline for the sexual assault on the address 800-656-4673.