Ohio town's beloved high school football team to take center stage in rape case

(USNews)


A divisive rape case that has rocked Steubenville, Ohio, goes to trial Wednesday in a small steel town community whose reputation has been severely damaged by cover-up allegations — just hours after the defense won a battle to force the accusers' friends to testify.


Accusations that two Steubenville High School football stars used their hands to violate a drunken 16-year-old girl during a night of victory parties in August became national news because of graphic cellphone photos and video that spread on social media.
A YouTube video of a partygoer cracking crude jokes about the alleged rape — made public by an offshoot of the hacker group Anonymous — brought more attention and outrage.
Team quarterback Trent Mays and wide receiver Ma'Lik Richmond, who will stand trial in Jefferson County juvenile court, have denied the charges that they assaulted the girl in a car and in a basement while she was in a stupor and couldn't give consent.
The girl — who told police she didn't remember the incident — will be one of dozens of witnesses taking the stand.
The prosecution's evidence includes a photograph, which was posted on Instagram, of Mays, 17, and Richmond, 16, carrying the teen out of a house by her arms and legs.
Three football players who have not been charged but allegedly witnessed the encounters also are expected to take the stand for the prosecution.
Defense lawyers had asked the court to compel three more teens from neighboring West Virginia to testify. They were originally denied, but late Tuesday night a judge reversed the decision and said two of the teens could be forced to testify.

Harding Stadium, home of the Steubenville High Big Red football team. Two members are going on trial Wednesday for allegedly raping a 16-year-old girl in a case that drew national attention.

The third witness — who is the accuser — agreed to do so voluntarily.
On Monday, Mays' lawyer had asked a judge to throw out the case, saying without those "material witnesses," he wouldn't get a fair trial.
The defense motions suggested the trio of witnesses would be asked about the alleged victim's alcohol consumption and what she said right after the incident and the next morning, according to The Associated Press.
"They're crucial because they have a great deal to do with the issue of consent," Mays' lawyer Adam Nemann told NBC affiliate WTOV. "A couple of the witnesses in particular were best friends of the accuser."
If convicted, Mays and Richmond could be held in a juvenile jail until they are 21.
The football-obsessed city of 18,000 where they were once local heroes has also, in some ways, been put on trial.
It took 11 days for prosecutors to charge anyone in the case, and victims' and women's groups have questioned why none of the teens who are said to have witnessed Mays and Richmond allegedly attack the girl have been arrested.
"Big Red football" — as the high school team is known — dominates life in Steubenville, where the local prosecutor and juvenile judge have already had to recuse themselves because of ties to the program.
At a Tuesday press conference, city officials and business leaders declined to comment on the criminal allegations but were upset about the harsh spotlight on Steubenville.
“The case shouldn't be reflective of our town,” City Manager Cathy Davison said, according to WTOV.
In a sign of the tensions surrounding the case, Richmond's grandmother, Linda Wheat, said she has been threatened.
"I thought these guys were innocent until proven guilty, but they're not," Wheat told Reuters. "These people online have made them guilty? Why have they ruined them?"
A lawyer for the girl's family said they are anxious for the trial to begin — and end.
"The family wants this matter over so they can move on with their lives and their daughter's healing," Bob Fitzsimmons told the Associated Press.

Cardinals don't agree on pope

(The Miami Herald)

VATICAN CITY -- Cardinals remained divided over who should be pope on Wednesday after three rounds of voting, an indication that disagreements remain about the direction of the Catholic church following the upheaval unleashed by Pope Benedict XVI's surprise resignation.

In the second day of the conclave, thick black smoke billowed from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel, prompting sighs of disappointment from the thousands of people gathered in a rain-soaked and chilly St. Peter's Square.

"I'm not happy to see black smoke. We all want white," said the Rev. ThankGod Okoroafor, a Nigerian priest studying theology at Holy Cross University in Rome. "But maybe it means that the cardinals need to take time, not to make a mistake in the choice."

Cardinals voted twice Wednesday morning in the Vatican's famed frescoed Sistine Chapel following an inaugural vote Tuesday to elect a successor to Benedict XVI, who stunned the Catholic world last month by becoming the first pope in 600 years to resign.

The cardinals broke for lunch at the Vatican hotel and planned another two rounds of voting Wednesday afternoon.

The drama - with stage sets by Michelangelo and an outcome that is anyone's guess - is playing out against the backdrop of the church's need both for a manager who can clean up an ungovernable Vatican bureaucracy and a pastor who can revive Catholicism in a time of growing secularism.

The difficulty in finding both attributes in one man, some analysts say, means that the world should brace for a long conclave - or at least one longer than the four ballots it took to elect Benedict in 2005.

"We have not had a conclave over five days since 1831," noted the Rev. Thomas Reese, author of "Inside the Vatican," a bible of sorts for understanding the Vatican bureaucracy. "So if they are in there over five days, we know they are in trouble; they are having a hard time forming consensus around a particular person."

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, however, noted that only one pope in the past century - Pope Pius XII - was elected on the third ballot, and that was on the eve of World War II.

"We don't have any reason to talk about divisions ... nor conflicts," Lombardi said. He said it simply takes time to reach consensus - two-thirds of the 115 votes, or 77 votes - on who the pope should be.

The names mentioned most often as "papabile" - a cardinal who has the stuff of a pope - include Cardinal Angelo Scola, the archbishop of Milan, an intellect in the vein of Benedict but with a more outgoing personality, and Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the Canadian head of the Vatican's important bishops' office who is also scholarly but reserved like Benedict.

Brazilian Cardinal Odilo Scherer is liked by the Vatican bureaucracy but not by all of his countrymen. And Cardinal Peter Erdo of Hungary has the backing of European cardinals who have twice elected him as head of the European bishops' conference.

On the more pastoral side is Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston, the favorite of the Italian press, and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the back-slapping, outgoing archbishop of New York who has admitted himself that his Italian is pretty bad - a drawback for a job that is conducted almost exclusively in the language.

The American candidates, however, did get a boost of sorts on Wednesday: President Barack Obama, who has clashed with American bishops over his health care mandate, indicated the Catholic Church could certainly tolerate a superpower pope since Catholic bishops in the U.S. "don't seem to be taking orders from me."