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Adam Anderson
DestinDawg
Posts: 636 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate
in Off Topic
Adam Anderson rape charges dismissed, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery
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Link. https://www.onlineathens.com/story/news/crime/2023/07/24/former-uga-football-player-adam-anderson-sentenced-after-he-pleads-guilty-to-sexual-battery/70459123007/#:~:text=Anderson%20was%20originally%20charged%20with,lawyer%20Steve%20Sadow%20of%20Atlanta.
Hope those doubting those victims will admit they were wrong and apologize.
Plea deals are often difficult to interpret. One year is very favorable compared to the time he would have served if convicted of rape.
However, given the other charges involving other incidents, it appears Anderson has engaged in a pattern of bad behavior and probably doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.
I hope he can use his time in jail to get his head on straight and then turn his life around after release… 😐
He has additional charges from unrelated incidents after his first arrest
I don’t think he had any charges dismissed. They were downgraded to misdemeanors as part of a plea deal
As a point of clarification, the charges are sexual battery, not just battery.
I used to prosecute and in my experience, this is the kind of deal that results when both sides appreciate the fact that have significant trial risk. The State doesn't put it on the table if they don't think there was a good chance he could walk and Anderson wanted to guard against the worst. Most likely this case at it's heart was just a total swearing match where the two sides told different stories and there wasn't really any other strong evidence in either direction. It would all come down to who was on the jury and who they believed. Those cases are dangerous as hell for everybody because they can legit go either way.
This is how the entire criminal justice system operates
Yes, the system is bad.
I would guess she had at least some degree of baseline credibility as well, i.e. her account was not readily disprovable or inconsistent. That is not to say I think he is certainly guilty by any stretch, but it presents a conundrum for the State, you just have to charge such a case and let the jury decide if need be. People can say "oh the system sucks" and what not but in such a case letting 12 of your peers decide who they believe is as fair as anything else, more fair probably. The advantage here was still to the defendant because of the State's high burden of proof, but this apparently wasn't a Jah Jarrett situation either. Her account had to have been at least plausible. Having been on both sides of these cases I'm not an ideological zealot either way, I just think the fact that both sides agreed to this deal indicates both sides appreciated the fact that there was a real and substantial risk of losing at trial.
I agree with you.
I am unsure about the admissibility of the subsequent, arguably similar, alleged conduct in other instances, but there appears to be evidence of a pattern of assaults and bad behavior. I am not a crimminal attorney; however, my initial thought is that, if I were prosecuting this case at trial, I would certainly attempt to get similar conduct evidence before the jury.
"In Fulton County, he was arrested on June 2, 2022, on charges of kidnapping, false imprisonment, battery, simple battery, theft by taking and reckless conduct. Those charges were filed by Georgia Tech police, according to documents filed by the district attorney.
"The charges are still pending, according to the document.
"In May 2022, he was arrested by Cobb County police on charges of DUI and simple assault. The DUI was later dismissed, but he was sentenced to almost a year on probation for the assault charge, according to documents."
This is very bad news. Very sad. Tragic.
Hard cases make bad law
You can’t do that. Each criminal trial is about the evidence of the case at hand not prior convictions which are inadmissible. Only time you can bring up past convictions is to impeach the credibility of a witness, so if the defendant chose to testify you could bring it up as a way to discredit them. Prosecutors also have to run this by the judge beforehand so they can weigh how useful a prior conviction would be to the jury against how unfair it would be for the defendant
Thanks for this. I"ve often wondered about it, especially when I see law being practiced on TV.
Think about how messed up it would be if the state could just arrest and convict someone of a crime if the only evidence they had was:
better 10 guilty creeps go free than one innocent saint be found guilty. I see how it is set up.
Thank you and our other legal pros here for your first person insights, it really helps someone like me understand the reality behind the curtain, though it's a bit disheartening at times to hear about the backroom stuff.
My perspective on the various explanations here is that it seems the purpose of these deals is to make sure some punishment is meted out in cases where the original charges, ostensibly believed to be true when they were applied, are not air tight and the prosecutor does not want to take an "L" on an all-or-nothing situation. This might be cynical, but I don't understand why DA's would press charges and then not be willing to stand behind their prosecutors' support for them in court. As much as we all want the victims to receive some justice, or at least some sense of of it, isn't it better to let the case play out and and risk having the defendant either walk or go all the way down on the original charges based on the strength of the evidence and the deliberations of the jury? This seems more like a contract negotiation in which both sides use the other's fear of losing out than it does the application of law and due process. I guess the end result is an outcome that "S-u-c-k-s Less" for both sides than it could have for either side.