Scandals & Feuds ·
Sam Ukwuachu’s Sexual-Assault Conviction Was Reversed, Then Reinstated
Excluded messages led to a new-trial order in the Baylor case. A later ruling restored the conviction while returning other appellate issues to the lower court.
After Sam Ukwuachu’s August 2015 conviction for sexually assaulting a former Baylor soccer player, Texas’s 10th Court of Appeals overturned the judgment and ordered a new trial. The former Baylor football player’s appeal turned in part on text messages that the trial court had excluded. For the woman, the reversal meant the prospect of participating in another prosecution.
“We’re very disappointed to hear the news, mostly because our client has been through so much as it is,” her attorney, John Clune, said. “But she’ll continue to cooperate with whatever the authorities need from her going forward.”
The three-judge panel’s order listed six appellate issues, including objections to the prosecution’s references to cellphone records, the indictment and the exclusion of messages between the woman and a friend on the night of the alleged assault. The order concluded: “We reverse the judgment of conviction and remand this proceeding for a new trial.” The court ordered a new trial rather than an acquittal.
Clune disputed the significance of the messages to the encounter at issue. “They don’t show anything having to do with consent,” he said. He also said he assumed the district attorney’s office would appeal to a higher court.
In a later phase of the case, another appellate dispute concerned phone records and their use against two defense witnesses. KXXV reported that Ukwuachu submitted a computer-forensics expert’s affidavit in 2017 challenging whether the records could accurately establish a location without expert review. Ukwuachu argued that the prosecution’s references to times and locations created a false impression for the jury and violated his due-process rights. The 10th Court of Appeals agreed with that challenge and overturned the conviction.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals subsequently reversed that decision and reinstated the 2015 conviction. According to KXXV’s account of the ruling, the state’s highest criminal court rejected the lower court’s treatment of the false-evidence issue, saying the phone records had not been introduced into evidence and therefore had not affected the jury’s decision. The court returned the case to the 10th Court of Appeals to consider other appellate issues it had not yet addressed.