Police Captain Joel Walker testified on Tuesday about finding two photos of a nude girl on a cell phone belonging to a 17-year old boy accused of rape along with another teenager in Steubenville, Ohio, CNN reported.
It was not immediately clear and apparent whether the images described were of the alleged 16-year-old victim. Trent Mays, 17, and Ma'lik Richmond, 16, two Steubenville high school football players, are accused of sexually assaulting the girl during a series of end-of-summer parties on August 11, 2012. Both are charged with rape; Mays is also charged with illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material. Defense attorneys claim they're innocent.
Prosecutors charge the teenagers treated her "like a toy," and the case received widespread attention in the U.S., since they posted images of the victim in a seemingly unconscious state to social media sites.
The case will hinge not on consent, but rather on, whether Mays and Richmond knew the girl was too impaired to know what was happening the night of the alleged attacks," prosecutor Hemmeter said in opening statements Wednesday, and reported by CNN. The girl, Hemmeter said, was "too impaired to say no, too impaired to say stop." She was reportedly to "be drunk, stumbling, swaying and throwing up."
Five additional witnesses testified on Thursday morning, including officials with cell phone companies and computer forensic special for the Ohio Bureau of Investigation, testifying "her analysis of 17 cell phones examined by police. More prosecution witnesses are expected to testify Thursday afternoon and evening in a marathon 11-hour session that isn't expected to end until 8 p.m."
A verdict is expected by Sunday. The visiting Judge Thomas Lipps is presiding over the trial without a jury.
The rape allegations have exposed the perceived notion of "rampant misconduct by players of the highly regarded Steubenville High School football team and have suggested that other students took part in the assaults or failed to do enough stop them ," CNN reported.
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