Via Detroit News:
“Regret is not rape. Regret is not rape,” said Cleaves’ attorney Frank Manley. “Consensual sex activity between two adults is not a crime.”
Manley said the woman was in a Flint area motel room with Cleaves in September 2015 “of her own free will” and engaged in kissing with Cleaves.
“By the time the truth comes out, the truth will set my client free,” Manley told jurors and Judge Celeste Bell in Genesee County Circuit Court. “The truth will be there; the truth will be self-evident.”
Manley said: “These are adults. She never suggested she said no. Consent is consent is consent.”
Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Lisa Lindsey disagreed.
Lindsey told the jury of 10 women and four men that the woman told Cleaves she wanted to leave but he continued to force himself on the woman even having alleged unwanted sex with her.
“She rode voluntarily with him but she didn’t want to be in the motel with him,” she told jurors. “She escaped two times (from the motel room).
Lindsey said Cleaves “had complete control of what happened in that room.”
The prosecutor said the woman ran out of the motel room and ran into another motel guest who witnessed Cleaves pulling the woman back into the room.
“She was crying, she was hysterical, she was terrified,” said Lindsey. The prosecutor said once police arrived to investigate the incident, they “favored” Cleaves over the woman.
Cleaves led Michigan State to the NCAA basketball championship in 2000 and played for four NBA teams.
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