A federal judge from the Middle District of Pennsylvania has dismissed the claim of a Penn State University football player, who sued the university, the police and a female acquaintance after he was accused of rape, a charge that was later dismissed.
The court found specifically that there was no evidence that the defendants conspired against plaintiff Austin Scott and that there was probable cause to arrest him.
Scott was a heralded high school football star when he arrived at State College in 2003. His career, however, was plagued with injuries as he never met the expectations.
But in October 2007, Scott had sex with a woman at his campus apartment and was charged with rape. Scott maintained all along that the encounter was consensual, while the woman maintained that it was rape.
Just before trial was set to start, the court allowed into evidence a prior case when the woman falsely accused a different man of rape. The Centre County District Attorney’s office dropped the charges against Scott.
Soon thereafter, Scott alleged that police and prosecutors knowingly withheld information about woman’s prior rape allegation, and that officers broke department policy by altering their reports at the insistence of Assistant District Attorney Lance Marshall.
“There was a culture of prosecuting football players,” Scott’s attorney Benjamin Lichtman told the media. “There was an initial conspiracy to prosecute … and to withhold the prior allegation.”
The alleged conspiracy also damaged Scott’s opportunity to play in the NFL, according to the plaintiff.
In considering the claim, the court wrote that “the Penn State defendants argue there is no conspiracy claim because plaintiff has presented no evidence that they agreed among themselves and (the woman) to unlawfully prosecute Scott, nor any evidence of any wrongful act. We agree.”
The court added that a Civil Rights Act claim brought against a private individual requires proof of a conspiracy with government officials. In addition, Penn State University and its police supervisors were not liable for failing to intervene because Scott did not present evidence that his civil rights were violated, or that the university had a policy of allowing police officers to violate constitutional rights, according to the court.
In a statement, attorneys for the defendants said they “were confident in the actions taken by police, and have maintained throughout that all procedures were followed according to laws, and policies that we have in place. This is good news.”
Lichtman hinted to the media that an appeal would be forthcoming. “This isn’t ‘game over’ in Austin’s fight to clear his name, far from it. We haven’t even entered the second quarter, and there is still a lot of work to be done ahead.”
