TERRENCE SHANNON JR. WON A RAPE TRIAL, IN KANSAS, AND NBA STARDOM AWAITS
Evidence was lacking in Douglas County, where a teenaged woman claimed the Illinois star penetrated her vagina in a bar, and his acquittal should lead the Chicago Bulls or other pro teams to draft him
The day is pleasant when Terrence Shannon Jr. wins a slaughter game at Kansas. He didn’t prevail in the famous basketball fieldhouse, but a 23-year-old Black man ventured into Douglas County and prevailed as not guilty in a felony rape case. Here’s the racial composition at the University of Kansas: 66.7 percent of students are White and 4.4 percent are Black. By refusing to accept a settlement, he could have destroyed his life, including an NBA career that views him as a potential star.
Instead, Shannon posted a video in which he writes “#NOTGUILTY” and lets the music play. “You’ve got to feel me. Because God made you different,” a voice says.
So often, college athletes are railroaded in public trials of sexual assault. This time, his attorneys made it clear that menacing evidence wasn’t forthcoming. In a campus bar called the Jayhawk Cafe, an 18-year-old woman said she met Shannon in a basement corner known as the Martini Room last Sept. 8. He had watched his university’s football team, the Illinois Fighting Illini, lose to the Jayhawks on a road trip. When she and a friend were exiting, she said she noticed Shannon waving at her. Her friend convinced her to stick around. When she returned to say hello, she said Shannon reached for her skirt and put his finger inside her vagina for no longer than 10 seconds.
In some cases, involving sports and real life, whatever the alleged victim says often stands pat in court. Lawyers fold, preferring another journey. But Shannon stands to make multiple millions in the future, if that matters, and it certainly does. And the only surveillance footage from the bar didn’t show him and the woman together. She returned home and decided, without official instructions, to look online for rosters of the Kansas and Illinois football and basketball teams. On her own, she saw Shannon, a nationally recognized scorer for a Big Ten title contender. She didn’t call police until later.
“All I did was stand there in shock,” she said this week. “I didn’t want to end up here.”
It’s disturbing to think someone could look at many dozens of photos and immediately choose her attacker. She obtained an examination kit at a Lawrence hospital, yet it still wasn’t time to retire for the evening. She returned to the Martini Room with her friend, as a computer forensics expert testified. Later, in December, a phone thread included the woman and her friends. One of whom wrote: “got his ass,” which included emojis with dollar signs for eyes and cash for tongues. Why was no male DNA found in swabs in her genital area?
Was this a set-up? Know how many set-ups happen in the common world? Terrence Shannon Jr. won unanimously after the jury convened for about 90 minutes.
“We’re happy with the outcome. Quite frankly, I think the public at large owes him an apology now,” said defense attorney Mark Sutter. “I think he took a lot of weight, took a lot of ridicule from the court of public opinion. But now that the jury of his peers have spoken, I think everyone owes him an apology. He's a good kid and we had a lot of really good character witnesses in addition to the investigation and the challenge of all the evidence, or lack thereof. It was a nice turnout for him.”
“It’s a travesty that it took this long for justice to be achieved in this case,” said another attorney, Tricia Bath. “I think the jury rendered a correct verdict, but I don’t think we ever should have been here.”
All Shannon did for months was claim he was innocent. “I never touched, grabbed, pulled over. … That did not happen,” he told the jury. He will carry on. Soon enough, the Chicago Bulls will find community support if they draft the 6-6 guard at No. 11 in the first round. He attended Lincoln Park High, right? As we saw in the NCAA tournament, where he was pinpointed harshly by the national media, he can score and lead a team far, including the Illini, who were throttled by Dan Hurley’s Connecticut back-to-back champions in the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament.
The ultimate thanks will come June 26, when NBA teams convene to select players. First he found love from his mother, Treanette Redding, who said by the courtroom, “The accusations didn’t match the person that I raised. I knew my son wasn’t capable of something like that. I’m just happy justice was served.”
The outcome was so straightforward, it makes us ask why Shannon was vulnerable to media attention throughout the season. Why did the legal exercise take so damned long? We wondered why CBS and TNT were laying low, and it was worthy of a mention — and I joined in. Now, hush up forever.
In court, players from the Kansas basketball program didn’t have to show up. Hunter Dickinson and Kevin McCullar Jr. testified anyway on Shannon’s behalf, along with Illini guard Justin Harmon and graduate assistant DyShawn Hobson. All were at the Martini Room. Said Reba Daniels, Shannon’s academic adviser in Champaign: “I was completely shocked, It’s just not the person I know. Even to this day, I’m shocked I’m sitting here.”
Any cover-up would require too many expert actors. Prosecutors simply didn’t have the goods. “When he wants something,” said senior assistant district attorney Ricardo Leal, “he gets it.” Why, because he’s an outstanding basketball player at a big school? The same could be said for hoodlums in Bill Self’s program at Kansas.
Actually, Shannon almost was bamboozled without any justification. “Two things aren’t debatable,” Sutter told jurors. “Simple science dictates that Terrence Shannon Jr. isn’t responsible for this crime, and there’s been absolutely no effort to find the perpetrator guilty of this crime.”
Now they have a chance in Douglas County. If they want to help the woman, who has turned 19, they will keep looking. “I was terrified,” she said, as tears spilled. “I was scared and I was shocked.”
The wrong man was picked off a computer screen. Keep looking. Next time, how about identifying the right person?
“I am thrilled for Terrence with the news,” Illinois coach Brad Underwood said. “Under six months of intense scrutiny, Terrence has shown tremendous composure, maturity and focus. He can now put this behind him and move forward with his life. I, along with everyone in our Illinois basketball program, will continue to offer Terrence our full support as he looks to fulfill his NBA dreams.”
“This has been a very serious and unfortunate situation for all parties involved, and I am happy for Terrence that it has been resolved and his name has been cleared,” Illini athletic director Josh Whitman said. “We look forward to cheering for him as he begins his NBA journey.”
For nine months, Shannon was coerced by the law. He had to wait and prove himself to 30 NBA teams. Any of them would be foolish not to draft him. Feel him, as he said on video.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.