Star Quarterback Rape Trial: Jordan Johnson's Police Interview Played in Court
Feb. 26, 2013 — -- For the first time in the he-said-she-said case of Jordan Johnson, the former star college quarterback who's at the center of a divisive alleged sexual-assault trial, jurors are hearing his side of the story: that he did not rape his accuser.
Johnson's lawyers maintain that the University of Montana Grizzlies sophomore had consensual sex with a 21-year-old classmate last February. A month-and-a-half after the incident, however, the woman told authorities he forced himself on her.
"I don't think I had any intentions of a relationship," Johnson testified Monday in Missoula, Mont.
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Soft spoken and demure while speaking to the court, Johnson, 20, detailed the extent of their relationship, including the nature of text messages they exchanged, which he says included innocuous questions about how she was doing and how her classes were going. Eventually, the two started seeing each other in person.
"She came to my dorm room and I came to her dorm room," he told the court in a trial that began Feb. 13.
Police say that on the night of the alleged incident, the woman, who has not been named because of the nature of the alleged crime, invited Johnson to her room to watch a movie. What happened next depends on whom you believe. Johnson's accuser filed a report on the alleged rape six weeks later, and last summer he was charged with having sexual intercourse without consent.
In a police interrogation tape played for the jury on Thursday, Johnson says the two began kissing on the woman's bed, before things went further.
"If she had said stop or no, I would have stopped," Johnson said during his interrogation.
But shortly after the incident, Johnson's accuser texted a friend, saying she thinks she might have just been raped, and saying that she did say no, but he wouldn't listen.
In a Facebook conversation, however, she later told another friend that maybe she wanted it.
Earlier in the day Monday, the jury heard a recording of the accuser's brother, who also has not been named, saying his sister struggled to tell their family about her alleged rape.
"She started off really calm," he said. "And then by the end, she started breaking down."
