FLINT, Mich. _ Former MSU basketball star and NBA player Mateen Cleaves was found not guilty on all charges in his trial on sex assault charges, ending a case that began nearly four years ago when a woman accused him of raping her at a Mundy Township motel.
The jury of nine women and three men began deliberations just after 1:45 p.m. Tuesday and delivered its verdicts less a little more than two hours later. Cleaves sobbed after the last of four not-guilty verdicts was read in Genesee County Circuit Court.
"Thank you for giving me my life back," Cleaves said.
Outside court, he proclaimed his innocence. "I've been waiting for this moment for four years," he told reporters. "I didn't do anything wrong."
Juror Michael Lambert said the verdict was swift because he and others on the panel didn't believe Cleaves' accuser. "Her testimony was consistent lies," Lambert said, adding that jurors thought the woman forgot key parts of her story too often.
Cleaves' sister, Monique Cleaves, said she never doubted he would be cleared. "I never felt in my mind he was guilty," she said.
During closing arguments Tuesday morning, a prosecutor said the woman who has accused Cleaves of raping her did not consent to sex.
Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor David Champine said the woman, of Mount Morris, did not want to have sex with Cleaves and told him so.
The woman, said Champine, told Cleaves she had a boyfriend and that he had a wife and child and that nothing was going to happen between them. But, said Champine, Cleaves wasn't going to take no for an answer and twice pulled the woman back into a motel room at the Knights Inn in Mundy Township on Sept. 15, 2015.
"You can see her in the video pulling away," Champine told jurors. "Despite being told this can't happen ... she was able to push him off in some way and get out of there. He grabs her and starts pulling her. You can see her in the video pulling away ... she doesn't want to go back but his decision is he's going to take her back."
After the alleged assault, Champine said, the woman "just wanted to go home. She wanted her mom and she wanted her boyfriend."
The testimony of the woman proves beyond a reasonable doubt that she was raped, said Champine.
"You have a multitude witness testimony," he said. "You have medical evidence, DNA evidence. You even have the police. You have her words on up on the stand ... four years later ... this is still difficult (for her)."
But Cleaves' defense team told jurors it was a clear case of consensual sex and that the woman is lying because she felt bad because she had cheated on her boyfriend with him.
"Regret is not rape," said defense attorney Michael Manley, echoing his brother and co-counsel's words from opening statements in the trial. Manley said there is not a "sliver of DNA" evidence that backs up her claims of rape.
Michael Manley said the woman is not taking "accountability" for her actions while Cleaves has. The defense attorney says the woman willingly went to the motel with Cleaves and that she also decided to drink while there.
Cleaves and the woman allegedly met at a charity golf outing hours before.
"It's very important that you look at the phone records too," Michael Manley told jurors Tuesday. "Mateen Cleaves texts (the woman's) boyfriend and he calls her best friend twice. You are not raping somebody and calling the boyfriend and (best friend). What you're trying to do is get her home because she is in a panic."
In rebuttal closing arguments, assistant Wayne County prosecutor Lisa Lindsey said "there were two escape attempts" from the motel room by the woman.
"(Cleaves) hears her pleas and ignores her (requests) to go home," said Lindsey, who said Cleaves told the woman, "I don't care," in response to the woman's alleged pleas to go home.
Lindsey disagreed with Cleaves' defense team that he was trying to bring the woman back to the room to calm her down. But even if that were so, Cleaves should have let the woman make a call on his own cellphone, the prosecutor said.
"No woman is ever obligated to have sex," Lindsey said.
"She took a picture with him ... so what? She's not obligated to have sex. She got into his car. So what? She is not obligated to have sex," said Lindsey.
The courtroom was packed Tuesday as Cleaves' relatives, friends and supporters listened to the final arguments in the trial, including Tom Izzo, who coached Cleaves at MSU.
Izzo said while he didn't know the circumstances or details around the allegations surrounding his former standout player, he was there to give support to Cleaves as he would "any of my guys."
Detroit businessman Robert Carmack also was among the court spectators.
The closing arguments were held a week after the start of the trial for Cleaves in Genesee Circuit Court before Judge Celeste Bell.
Cleaves, 41, was tried on charges of unlawful imprisonment, assault with intent to commit criminal sexual penetration, second-degree criminal sexual conduct and two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison.
Cleaves has denied the allegations. In a March 2016 tweet, he said: "My family and I are devastated by these false charges. I am innocent and the allegations are without merit."
In his opening statements last week, Cleaves' attorney said Cleaves and the woman had consensual sex and that "regret is not rape."
But Lindsey disagreed saying the woman did not have control over Cleaves and that she told the former athlete that she wanted to leave the hotel.
The Detroit News does not typically identify those who say they have been sexually assaulted.
During testimony at the preliminary examination for Cleaves in November 2016, a guest at the motel testified that she saw a man, later identified as Cleaves, dragging a woman back into a room.
The guest said the woman was begging and crying hysterically: "Help me! Help me! Help me!"
The woman testified during the trial last week.
The Mount Morris woman said during her testimony at the preliminary examination that she had gone to a gathering at a bar with Cleaves at the Warwick Hills Golf and Country Club, where the golf event was held.
The woman said she and Cleaves stopped at a gas station and that she fell asleep before waking up in a room at the motel with him. She said he began kissing her and that she told Cleaves she had a boyfriend.
The woman said she told Cleaves she "wanted to go home" but admitted she kissed him even after saying that.
"He started kissing me. I kissed him back, and I remember being on the bed," the woman said. She said she didn't want to be "rude" to Cleaves, a celebrity donor to her employer, because she didn't want her rejection of his advances to affect her job.
In December 2016, Genesee District Judge M. Cathy Dowd, now retired, dismissed all charges against Cleaves, saying "there are a number of factors that led (her) to believe something else was going on" between Cleaves and the woman.
But Cleaves was ordered in 2017 to stand trial after now-retired Genesee Circuit Court Judge Archie Hayman ruled following an appeal from the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office that Dowd "did abuse her discretion of power" in dismissing the case against Cleaves.
Last year, the Michigan Supreme Court refused to review Hayman's decision to reinstatement the charges against Cleaves.
The case was tried by the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office after Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton recused himself, citing a conflict of interest.
