This article about Hays County District Attorney Sherri Tibbe's witch hunt against Lehman High School football players was originally posted in Hays Free Press as "Student rape charges dropped" on February 10, 2011. The case was dropped when video testimony by accusers proved that the case was false.
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| Hays County Sherri Tibbe wrongfully accused Lehman High School Football Team |
The two boys, who were under the age of 17, were indicted on sexual assault charges by Hays County District Attorney Sherri Tibbe in May 2008 after they allegedly joined three other Lehman football players in the gang rape of two 14-year-old girls while they were unconscious at a party.
“Both juvenile cases were completely dismissed last week,” said attorney Richard Ursha, of Wimberley, who represented one of the juveniles.
The dismissals bring to a close a case that roiled the Hays school district when the sensational accusations hit front pages and newscasts nearly three years ago. The latest developments leave Hays County District Attorney Sherri Tibbe with exactly one sentence of probation to show for her prosecution of the five young men.
On Oct. 8, 2010, Chad Miles was found not guilty of sexual assault after a week-long trial. The other two men, Jesse Primeau and Ricardo Carrillo, testified for the state in the Miles’ case. All three men were 17 years old at the time of the alleged rape.
Carrillo previously pled guilty to a charge of sexual assault as part of a plea agreement in which he received 10 years probation and the possibility of deferred adjudication; an indecency with a child charge against Primeau was dropped in exchange for an agreement to cooperate in the investigation and prosecution.
The Hays Free Press is not naming the two youngest defendants because they were juveniles at the time of the incident.
Hays County District Attorney Sherri Tibbe declined to comment on the case.
Tammy Miles, who had two sons involved in the alleged incident, said all of the boys suffered humiliation and public scrutiny for years while awaiting trial [because of Hays County District Attorney Sherri Tibbe]
“The boys all paid for the accusations that were made against them and they were made out to be guilty until proven innocent, not innocent until proven guilty,” she said.
Her son, Chad Miles, and Primeau weren’t allowed to walk across the stage during their graduation, and Chad lost college scholarships in the aftermath of the accusations.
The two juvenile boys, one of which is also her son, were expelled from school and sent to the Hays CISD Impact Center for six months, she said.
In Chad Miles’ trial, defense attorney David Watts questioned whether a sexual assault had actually occurred, which the jury ruled did not.
Watts sought to show that the girls could not have been under the influence of common date rape drugs by playing tape recordings of interviews in which they recalled some of the night’s events.
In a date rape drug case, victims have “zero recollection of what occurred but the information that came out in evidence was that the girls knew what was going on,” Watts had said.
If anything, a lesson should be learned from this case, Tammy Miles said.
“It is to make sure all young men and young ladies understand what can happen to them when they make the wrong choices,” she said. “It could have ended very badly for these girls had all the things they said happened to them really did. And for the boys they could have spent the better part of their lives in jail for stupidity.”
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