The lawyer for the woman who accused Florida State University quarterback Jameis Winston of sexual assault says she’ll ask state attorney general Pam Bondi to investigate the Tallahassee Police Department’s conduct.
Patricia Carroll held a press conference Friday morning to blast the way the TPD and Tallahassee State Attorney Willie Meggs conducted their investigations.
Carroll stopped short of accusing the TPD of misconduct, but did allege that case records provided to the media were incomplete. Carroll says records she received from the accuser’s family appear more complete, adding that seven of the 11 pages of one report are missing from the case files released this week to the media.
Carroll also attacked the credibility of the two witnesses who say they saw Winston and the woman engaged in a sex act, calling the statements provided by the two men “patently false.”
Carroll says she wants Bondi to determine if there’s “a systemic problem” with the Tallahassee Police Department. During a 90-minute talk with reporters in a Pasco County park, she said Meggs should have spent more than the 13 days he took to parse the facts in the case.
Carroll says Meggs determined he could not charge anyone in the case only because his investigation wasn’t thorough enough. WFSU News called Bondi’s office seeking a comment on whether she’ll heed Carroll’s request for an investigation, but a member of her press team could not give an immediate response.
Jameis Winston will find out Saturday if he’s the second freshman ever to win college football’s top award, the Heisman Trophy.
