Former
Michigan State basketball star Mateen Cleaves was acquitted Tuesday of charges alleging that he sexually assaulted a woman in a motel room four years ago.
Cleaves, 41, had faced charges of second-degree criminal sexual conduct, third-degree criminal sexual conduct, assault with intent to commit sexual penetration and unlawful false imprisonment after a Mount Morris woman in her mid-20s said he raped her at a Mundy Township motel on Sept. 15, 2015.
If convicted, Cleaves could have received a 15-year prison sentence.
A nine-woman, three-man jury deliberated for less than three hours, and Cleaves wailed loudly after the verdict was read.
The jury's verdict touched off cheers that were so loud in the hallway outside Genesee Circuit Judge Celeste D. Bell's courtroom that a sheriff's deputy had to remind the crowd where they were. So Cleaves took his supporters outside and celebrated on the courthouse steps.
"I've been waiting for four years for the truth to come out," Cleaves told the crowd. "I've been ridiculed in newspapers, in the media. ...
"To be portrayed as a rapist, it broke my heart every day. But lying about rape is just as bad."
During the nearly two-week trial, prosecutors had played clips from a surveillance video outside the Knights Inn motel that prosecutors said showed Cleaves, clad only in socks, pulling the near-naked Mount Morris woman back to a motel room twice. They also called a witness, Coleen Dowdall, who said that the woman was crying and hysterical and repeatedly pleaded, "Help me," as she stood in the walkway of the motel.
Defense attorneys Frank and Mike Manley argued that Cleaves and the woman had consensual sex, and that she got into Cleaves' Cadillac SUV willingly. In closing arguments, Mike Manley said the woman had "selective memory" of what went on in Cleaves' vehicle and the motel room and that she lied because she cheated on her boyfriend.
Cleaves met the woman at a charity golf outing at Warwick Hills Golf and Country Club in Grand Blanc, Michigan, and drank at a nearby bar and grill that night with some of her co-workers, including her boyfriend. As the group dispersed around 1 a.m., Cleaves, according to multiple witnesses, suggested they head back to the bar at the golf course.
The woman, who was believed to be intoxicated, rode with Cleaves. But they did not end up at the golf course. He drove her to a gas station, then the Knights Inn motel in Mundy Township. There, the woman said, Cleaves sexually assaulted her.
The woman testified for more than four hours last week. Cleaves did not take the stand.
Juror Michael Lambert said the jury spent about 45 minutes of their deliberation viewing the surveillance video. It didn't sway their verdict. But the jury did notice inconsistencies in her testimony and her original statement, he said.
