The attorney for one of three former Oklahoma football players accused of rape spent Tuesday morning reconstructing events with the victim of the alleged attack and raising questions about the woman's memory.
The 20-year-old Oklahoma City woman returned to the stand in the second day of the preliminary hearing for Nigel Clay, Bernard Hall and Glen Bell. All three are charged with first-degree rape in the alleged Jan. 21 attack while Hall, 22, of Detroit, and Clay, 20, of Fontana, Calif., face two additional charges each of furnishing liquor to a minor. Bell, 20, is from Muskogee.The three were suspended from the football team and the university after charges were filed against them in February. The preliminary hearing in Cleveland County District Court will determine if the men should be tried on the charges.
On Monday, the woman meticulously recounted details of the night she allegedly was raped by three Oklahoma football players, saying she was thrown to the floor of an athletic dorm and attacked by several men.
However, she admitted she cannot say who raped her because the room was too dark.
"I couldn't see any faces," she said in response to a question by District Attorney Tully McCoy.
Clay's attorney, Joel Barr, started Tuesday's testimony by asking the woman when she came to believe Clay may have been one of her assailants.
She had testified Monday that she did not believe on the night of the attack that Clay had been involved.
The woman said she found out on Feb. 9 in the district attorney's office that Clay was a possible attacker. Charges were filed Feb. 10.
The woman said she had previously told police officers that she did not think Clay had been involved.
"He (McCoy) went over with me what happened and I changed my mind," she said. She said she believed, because of his size, that Clay would have been the fifth of the six people she said attacked her. Clay is 6-foot-4 and weighs 274 pounds, according to the Oklahoma media guide.
She had testified Monday that the fifth attacker "knocked the breath out of me."
Barr asked questions that seemed to confuse the woman and raised questions about her recollections of Jan. 21.
She gave a detailed description of how Clay had directed her from a dorm room to a liquor store and a grocery store, but said she could not remember the directions Clay had given her to get back to the dorm.
She said she remembered Clay asking her girlfriend in the dorm if she could drink six shots of Everclear and that her friend spilled some of the liquor. The woman could not remember what type of utensil her friend drank from, however.
At one point during the morning testimony, she paused and said, "My mind just went blank."
Special District Judge Gary Purcell gave the woman a few moments to collect her thoughts.