Judge sentences Idaho high school football player in assault case - East Idaho News
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Judge sentences Idaho high school football player in assault case

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DIETRICH — An Idaho judge has sentenced a high school football player to three years of probation and 300 hours of community service after prosecutors said he took part in a brutal locker room assault on a black football player in a small Idaho town.

District Court Judge Randy Stoker sentenced John R.K. Howard of Keller, Texas, on Friday. The Times-News reports that Stoker’s decision included granting a withheld judgment, which means the teen’s conviction could one day be dismissed.

Howard was originally charged with sexually assaulting his classmate after prosecutors said he kicked a coat hanger into the victim’s rectum during the October 2015 incident at Dietrich High School. But in December, Howard pleaded guilty to felony injury to a child as part of a modified guilty plea — known as an Alford plea — in which he acknowledged he would be found guilty in a trial but maintained his innocence.

Howard, who is white, is the only accused assailant whose criminal case was handled in adult court. Two others faced charges in closed juvenile court; one of them has pleaded guilty.

Meanwhile, the victim’s family has sued the school district for $10 million in damages, contending the assault was the culmination of months of racist taunts and physical abuse at the high school. The lawsuit is still pending.

However, on Friday, Howard’s attorney, Brad Calbo, argued that the case was not about racism nor was it about rape. Instead, the victim simply backed up toward his client, who was sitting on a bench, with a hanger hanging between his buttocks. Calbo says that Howard kicked the victim, but did not kick the hanger on purpose.

“The racist stuff, it’s not there,” Calbo said. “They’re absurd allegations. … This has all been blown out of proportion for the pursuit of money.”

Deputy Attorney General Casey Hemmer also said that a medical examination of the victim’s rectum found no internal or external injuries, adding that the victim did say an assault did occur in the locker room.

The victim’s adoptive parents stormed out of the hearing during Calbo’s presentation. They declined to comment, other than refer to the mother’s comments made earlier in the hearing, explaining to the judge that she “felt the plea was so unfair.”

One of Calbo’s key arguments hinged on a recorded conversation between the victim and the football coaches, just days after they were named defendants in the civil lawsuit in 2016. In the recording, the victim recants his accusations and blamed the issue on his parents.

Yet in a Feb. 17 deposition with the school district’s lawyers, the victim took back what he said in the recording.

“All that stuff, I just made up,” he said of the recording. “I just started telling a bunch of just lies because I wanted my friends back.”

The deposition was part of the civil lawsuit, which is expected to go to trial this summer.

Despite Calbo’s claim that the incident did not involve racism, the NAACP Tri-State Conference of Idaho-Nevada-Utah asked the Idaho U.S. Department of Justice last week to conduct an independent investigation into the case.

The victim and his adopted siblings are the only black people in Dietrich, a town of about 350 people.

The lawsuit claims that Howard forced the victim to learn a Ku Klux Klan song and hold a Confederate flag and even knocked him unconscious while teammates cheered.

According to the civil suit, the boy “was taunted and called racist names by other members of the team including, ‘Kool-Aid’ ‘chicken eater’ ‘watermelon’ and (the N-word),” the suit alleges.

In addition to Dietrich High School, the lawsuit a names 11 employees as defendants and claims that school administrators and coaches did nothing to stop the racial and physical abuse toward the vulnerable victim.

Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden issued a statement on Friday in response to the sentencing.

“In light of the provable facts, this result is an appropriate conclusion to a difficult case,” Wasden’s statement read. “My thoughts continue to be with the victim and his family and my hope is that today’s sentencing will help them put this matter behind them.”

Wasden also noted that his job was to determine the admissible and relevant facts of the case and then prosecute accordingly. Though he noted that the incident was traumatic for the victim and his family, Wasden said he must hold the facts of the case up against Idaho law.

“It is my duty to protect the victim and hold the perpetrator accountable,” Wasden’s statement read. “Those two obligations have been met.”

This article was originally published in Idaho State Journal. It is used here with permission.

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