Terrence Shannon Jr. Found Not Guilty

ever said:

As some others have posted, this is a day of mixed-emotions. I'm glad our justice system has a threshold of "beyond reasonable doubt", and based on everything that was made public and reported, I'm obviously very glad the jury saw the reasonable doubt that we all saw and found TSJ not guilty.

But there is no justice here for whoever is guilty, nor as much clarity as the innocent deserve, and that's very sad.

If the woman was assaulted and generally said what she believed to be true, she gets nothing but ridicule for being misunderstood, and her assaulter is not held accountable and could have even more audacity to assault someone else. If she was not assaulted and/or knowingly made grossly false statements, she will likely not be punished for that unless more evidence comes out (some of the things reported were a bad look, but were far from proof that she knowingly made false accusations). If Shannon is innocent (while he was found not guilty, I don't think the evidence of his innocence reached 100%), he will never get to re-do the last 7+ months of his life, and who knows how this could hang over him in the future (sponsors, future girlfriend's parents, etc).

As for counter-suing, my first thought was that's a waste of time, money, energy, etc, and that he shouldn't draw more attention to this. But if anything comes up that would prove an intentionally false accusation, getting something on record (not for the money) would be very valuable to clear up anything that could hang over him in the future.

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I feel like you are treating the alleged victim's word (that something happened) as literal gold, but you are not treating Terrence's word (that he flat-out did NOT do this, which he said under oath) as "clarity" of his innocence. What has she done to earn your unwavering trust, and what has Terrence done to give you ANY doubt that his word is at least as reliable as hers? To have this perspective, you would have to believe that the fact that he was charged is some sort of "soft evidence" of his guilt ... and if that is the sort of credibility that this DA office holds in your opinion, I have to SERIOUSLY question your reasoning skills.

Throughout this, I would argue strongly that you have put the burden of proof on TSJ, and I don't know how you can deny that. Even if it is out of some sincere desire to have some broad support for all sexual assault victims, I still firmly believe that it is unfair and wrong in this case, regardless of your motives. This woman said she was sexually assaulted by Terrence Shannon. Terrence Shannon said he did not do this. The eyewitnesses, DNA evidence and video evidence for the first claim simply does not exist. The same evidence for TSJ's "innocence" can be debated, but there is literally zero evidence of his guilt. How do you come away with such a neutral conclusion about if he did this without a VERY serious bias (I would even allege a desire, unconscious or not) to believe he might have been correctly identified as the perpetrator, with no other reason than one woman said he did? Terrence's innocence actually literally has nothing to do with whether or not she was assaulted or not ... it has to do with the fact that HE was not the one who did it. And if a complete lack of evidence plus a Not Guilty verdict isn't enough for you, what is? A conviction of someone else? Blame the joke of a DA, don't cast a hint of doubt on Terrence.

EDIT: This is so frustrating that I am probably talking in circles, but the simple truth of it is even wilder ... not only do you afford more inherent credibility to her word than his (even though the evidence presented STRONGLY backs Terrence's denial more than her accusation), but you even seem to not accept the unanimous verdict as a game changer in any way as far as TSJ's innocence!

chibar said:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1801645411595084251

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F*****g legend.

lstewart53x3 said:

1: No evidence (video or DNA)

2: Alleged victim’s changing stories (was she grabbed by the wrist or not? Did she have a sip of a drink or more than that? Was she terrified or surprised?)

3: Friend of the alleged victim’s changing story (she initially stated to police she did not see anything, but under oath she saw the wrist grab, which the alleged victim originally stated to police her wrist was not grabbed).

4: We all understand that people have different reactions to traumatic events and I’ve certainly never been in the same situation as the alleged victim so I can’t speak directly to that, but going out to the same bar the night after you were allegedly raped in it is an interesting choice?

5: Another interesting choice is that for a girl who doesn’t drink or like large crowds to go to the same bar 30-40 times with a fake ID (not that this means it didn’t happen, simply that it’s another possible hole in the only potential evidence in the entire case, her own testimony).

6: Possible motive for picking the wrong guy or making the situation up found in the money eye emojis shared by her friend in the group chat.

7: Another man who was guilty sexual assault in the past was also accused of committing the same act 2 weeks prior and he was in the same bar at the same time of this attack, yet was never even interviewed for this crime?

8: The detectives on the case didn’t know how to spell Terrance’s name, didn’t interview witnesses, never went to back to the bar themselves, etc.

9: Multiple witnesses that night confirmed that they did not even see Shannon with this particular girl, including Shannon’s sober designated driver who’s only job was to watch Shannon all night long.

Yeah, he’s 100% innocent to me.

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Please make this a permanent pin for the historical record, as well as the (paraphrasing) "glad Hunter Dickinson is there, when he shows up we always win" post for a bit of comic relief. Two all-time posts there.

AirNeazy said:

I'm not going to assume what country you are from, but here in the United States we have this bedrock principle of our Justice system which is that you are always "innocent until proven guilty". Since TSJ was not found guilty in a court by a jury of his peers, in the eyes of the law (and as it should be in public discourse as well) he is considered 100% innocent.

No one cares what you specifically think in regards to the "evidence", he is deemed 100% innocent as it stands now.

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This!! I, for one, think quite a few posters here owe TSJ an apology. He is not just "not guilty," he is innocent, just as he was going into the trial. All those taking the accuser's claims to be sacrosanct, need to ask themselves why. We have watched Terrence's dedication, sincerity, and personality while he was here. All too many were assuming that "something happened" from someone that none of us know, like she is pure as new snow. I am not saying anything derogatory about the accuser, but I am saying that we just don't know what her motivations were. Where is the difference between thinking something happened, or thinking she made it all up? Both views assume a lot. If that isn't PC enough for you, I really do NOT care.

OrangeBlue98 said:

I could only imagine the look on the DA's face when TSJ made that statement. It probably betrayed a thought of, "Oh, s***. I actually have to prove this in a real trial (where, remember, her office was 0 for 7 heading into this trial)."

It took GUTS to hold firm and look for the full exoneration. Or maybe it didn't, because by that time it was pretty obvious the DA's case was already falling apart. Hell, after I read the initial affidavit, I kept asking myself exactly what convinced the DA that there was a case worthy of a prosecution?

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Could the DA have dropped either or both charges before the trial?
Or is that one of those "sorry, can't stop now, the die is cast" moments?

The Galloping Ghost said:

The thing I keep tumbling around in my head about this case is TSJ was the one guy in that whole bar with a chaperone whose entire job was to watch him and make sure he didn't do anything stupid. And DyShawn Hobson is the only person in that bar pretty much guaranteed to be relatively sober because he had to drive back from Lawrence to Champaign that night to ensure TSJ and Justin were at practice in the morning. If you're on that jury and you question everybody else's level of intoxication, he's the person whose word comes off the most credible. He's the person you trust. And the Lawrence police never even interviewed him.

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Yeah, Hobson being there and his testimony were instrumental in my opinion. By far the most credible witness put on the stand looking directly at the alleged perp at the alleged scene of the crime, and resolutely saying there was no interaction whatsoever between the two. And that he was also for all practical purposes the designated driver and chaperone for TSJ as his "job" for that trip, his testimony carried a ton of weight.

I also think this was an extremely fortunate event (Hobson being told to go with because they didn't want a tired TSJ getting behind the wheel) that needs to be taken as a learning experience and implemented as future policy. Something like if an athlete travels off campus to an uncontrolled environment send a designated chaperone with them to have eyes on them at all times and get them back to campus safely. Might just save their life.

aaeismacgychel said:

Yeah, Hobson being there and his testimony were instrumental in my opinion. By far the most credible witness put on the stand looking directly at the alleged perp at the alleged scene of the crime, and resolutely saying there was no interaction whatsoever between the two. And that he was also for all practical purposes the designated driver and chaperone for TSJ as his "job" for that trip, his testimony carried a ton of weight.

I also think this was an extremely fortunate event (Hobson being told to go with because they didn't want a tired TSJ getting behind the wheel) that needs to be taken as a learning experience and implemented as future policy. Something like if an athlete travels off campus to an uncontrolled environment send a designated chaperone with them to have eyes on them at all times and get them back to campus safely. Might just save their life.

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Keep in mind that Hobson's testimony has been out there for months (at least since January) and the DA still brought this to court. His testimony was not some surprise the DA hadn't been able to consider.

It's pretty clear that those who responded negatively to my post greatly misunderstand me and/or what I'm trying to say. I know from experience that I tend to hedge on things that most people are comfortable saying they're "100%" certain about. And I wasn't talking about legal innocence or whether I'm convinced of reasonable doubt (that's a completely different threshold on the other end of the scale). Of course he's 100% innocent in the eyes of the law, and based on what I know, if I had been on the jury, I would have voted not-guilty without hesitation. I'm merely hedging that sliver of uncertainty regarding a possible incident about which I have no first hand knowledge and some third hand knowledge of the trial/evidence. If you don't like thinking that way, that's fine, just move on or respond respectfully please.

The irony about attacking me for that tendency to hedge is that, as many here have agreed, we prefer a system where many guilty people go free rather than 1 innocent person is convicted. So people like me, who are less inclined to feel 100% convinced of something, would be more likely to vote "not guilty" if serving on a jury. And people who think this way are less likely to hurl insults at someone based on accusations or charges alone.

OrangeBlue98 said:

I'd highly recommend taking 40 minutes of your time to listen to this. Mitch Gilfillan did an outstanding job of breaking down the aspects of this case. He has a great way of breaking things down for people who aren't an expert in his field to understand these topics. I also thought Mike Cagley asked a lot of good, open-ended questions to allow Mitch to explain things well. Overall, this was an excellent interview on a difficult (both technically and emotionally) and complex topic. Well done to both.

I know it's probably not the best use of his email account, but I did send him a short email thanking him for the work he did. At the very least, he needs to hear from people who appreciated the work he did (and obviously was foregoing billable time to do this).

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The info about the foreman being a police officer was very interesting. May be a big reason they really hammered the police work in closing statements but could have been a risk as well for “loyalty” reasons.

MoCoMdIllini said:

Could the DA have dropped either or both charges before the trial?
Or is that one of those "sorry, can't stop now, the die is cast" moments?

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At any time the DA could have dropped one or both charges all the way up until the day before the trial they could've motioned for dismissal without prejudice to keep it open.

I just wish they would say it.

He’s innocent!

He was presumed innocent until proven guilty. He was found not guilty so the presumption becomes fact.

He not just “not guilty”. The bias has to be removed (by society) or how do you truly move beyond this.

Chad Fleck said:

This is something people do when they are absolutely innocent.

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And it provides a good explanation for why Mark Sutter was filled with righteous indignation in his closing argument and even went after the alleged victim's credibility. He KNEW his client was innocent and that the DA was slime. And when the jury got the case for deliberation, they knew it too.

The Galloping Ghost said:

The thing I keep tumbling around in my head about this case is TSJ was the one guy in that whole bar with a chaperone whose entire job was to watch him and make sure he didn't do anything stupid. And DyShawn Hobson is the only person in that bar pretty much guaranteed to be relatively sober because he had to drive back from Lawrence to Champaign that night to ensure TSJ and Justin were at practice in the morning. If you're on that jury and you question everybody else's level of intoxication, he's the person whose word comes off the most credible. He's the person you trust. And the Lawrence police never even interviewed him.

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I had not expected this testimony. I agree. It was compelling.

Fighter of the Nightman said:

EDIT: This is so frustrating that I am probably talking in circles, but the simple truth of it is even wilder ... not only do you afford more inherent credibility to her word than his (even though the evidence presented STRONGLY backs Terrence's denial more than her accusation), but you even seem to not accept the unanimous verdict as a game changer in any way as far as TSJ's innocence!

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Name and photo checks out.

some other good press. I'm hoping to see more outlets reporting this. TSJ deserves to have his reputation repaired.

Yukon said:

Good take. My question is... Who is guilty? Did they prove that the alleged incident actually happened? No witnesses that I've read about. DNA prove anything?

I certainly hope that if it did actually happen, they actually try and find the real guilty party. If it didn't then, again, who is guilty?

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Those who have never practiced law may be surprised to learn that there is a world of difference between "the truth" and "what you can convince a jury of." Sometimes the two overlap; many times they don't.

There will be no additional investigative work done on this particular case. With rare exception, once cases go to trial, they are never revisited. And this particular outcome (TSJ being charged and going to trial as the only suspect they seriously considered) was set into motion as soon as the alleged victim fixated on him as the person she believed she interacted with that night.

You cannot proceed to trial against someone your alleged victim and key witness has not identified. None of the other evidence mattered in this case. You are forced to go where the testimony leads you (or forced to drop the prosecution entirely). And we know based on how this DA has operated in the past that dropping this case entirely was never going to be consistent with her M.O.

abchew2 said:

The info about the foreman being a police officer was very interesting. May be a big reason they really hammered the police work in closing statements but could have been a risk as well for “loyalty” reasons.

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What I thought was interesting was Gilfillan and Sutter both correctly predicted that the police officer was going to be the foreman. I get they are experts and can probably sense those things far better than us lay people, but they nailed that one (as Sutter and Bach did throughout the trial - I was clearly wrong to question the "fire and brimstone" closing argument that I noted in the earlier TSJ thread).

BretMyBeachHouse said:

I had not expected this testimony. I agree. It was compelling.

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In the earlier thread, someone mentioned that Hobson's testimony might have been the most compelling of the whole trial (might have been you - if it was, I apologize for not remembering that). I don't remember if Gilfillan had any summaries of the cross-examination by the prosecution, but it would be awfully tough to contradict him.

After TSJ's testimony, if you're a juror you would have had to believe that two people (Hobson and TSJ) would have perfectly coordinated their false stories. One of them was stone-cold sober and was tasked with keeping eyes on TSJ the whole time. That individual (Hobson) would also see his coaching aspirations destroyed if he was busted for perjury. Certainly a different context, but I'm a former auditor. Our internal control tests were designed to not account for collusion. In other words, you have to assume that collusion is extremely difficult to do.

I have to think that Hobson's testimony started to drive the point home that TSJ was clearly "not guilty" and very likely fully innocent. TSJ's testimony and then Sutter's closing provided the exclamation point and the spiking of the football.

chibar said:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1801645411595084251

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Shannon from day one said he didn't do it, didn't know the person, wasn't going to plea or settle.

The DA was trying to peddle her lies and bullcrap of a case and there were no takers.Major stupidity displayed by her and her team....a bunch of dummies.

@Fighter of the Nightman , I just posted something that will probably explain some of this, but since you and I have discussed this respectfully enough over the months, I'll respond to you directly with hopefully a bit more clarity...

Fighter of the Nightman said:

I feel like you are treating the alleged victim's word (that something happened) as literal gold, but you are not treating Terrence's word (that he flat-out did NOT do this, which he said under oath) as "clarity" of his innocence...

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I think you have latched onto part of what I said without seeing the rest. I absolutely don't treat the victim's word as anything close to gold, as I said: "[it's sad that] if she was not assaulted and/or knowingly made grossly false statements, she will likely not be punished for that unless more evidence comes out"

Fighter of the Nightman said:

Throughout this, I would argue strongly that you have put the burden of proof on TSJ, and I don't know how you can deny that. Even if it is out of some sincere desire to have some broad support for all sexual assault victims, I still firmly believe that it is unfair and wrong in this case, regardless of your motives.

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You have seen me respond to Illinois fans throughout this, where I was mostly trying to say "we don't even know if we have all the information, so we can't know yet if he'll be found (and/or actually is) innocent". And in the early stages, the burden of proof for things to proceed is less than there is at trial. But if I had been responding to, say, Northwestern fans, you would have seen me focus on the opposite- that we really don't know enough to assume he's guilty, and that he deserves some respect while this plays out.

Fighter of the Nightman said:

How do you come away with such a neutral conclusion about if he did this without a VERY serious bias (I would even allege a desire, unconscious or not) to believe he might have been correctly identified as the perpetrator, with no other reason than one woman said he did? Terrence's innocence actually literally has nothing to do with whether or not she was assaulted or not ... it has to do with the fact that HE was not the one who did it.

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This is what I tried to clarify in my last post. First, there's a huge gap between the threshold for legal innocence (i.e. reasonable doubt; typically cited as being somewhere around 90-99% certain someone is guilty, or 1-10% certain someone is innocent) and being absolutely 100% certain someone didn't do something. Next, if I say I can't be 100% certain of something, I think it implies I'm much closer to 100% than 50%, but perhaps I should have been more clear that's the case.

Fighter of the Nightman said:

And if a complete lack of evidence plus a Not Guilty verdict isn't enough for you, what is? A conviction of someone else?

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All I can say is that I think it's very difficult to prove with 100% certainty that someone didn't do something merely by a lack of evidence. Reasonable doubt is easy, and you might get to 95% or 99% or whatever, but that last sliver is tricky, and it gets into all sorts of ideas that are off-topic and shouldn't take away from TSJ. That distinction wasn't the main point of my initial post, and I didn't mean to put the focus on that.

Fighter of the Nightman said:

Blame the joke of a DA, don't cast a hint of doubt on Terrence.

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You're right about this. I do blame the DA (including others in her office who went along with her) and the detectives, and I completely forgot to include that in my post. It's sad that they will likely never be held accountable for not doing more to seek the truth and for pushing such a weak case through.

OrangeBlue98 said:

TSJ is 100% innocent. It’s honestly not even debatable. The one sober eyewitness said under oath that TSJ never left his sight and didn’t do anything close to what he was accused of doing. No DNA evidence. The accuser could never keep a story straight.

This was well past “not guilty”. As I’ve said before, honestly this case practically proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he is absolutely innocent. I’m glad that we never had to deal with this alternate reality, but if the burden of proof was on the defense to prove innocence I believe they did just that.

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OrangeBlue98 said:

I have to think that Hobson's testimony started to drive the point home that TSJ was clearly "not guilty" and very likely fully innocent.

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I think we agree more than you realize. When you say "practically proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he is absolutely innocent" or "very likely fully innocent", I see that as in agreement with saying "while I can't be 100% certain...". I just should have worded it differently for this audience. I see that now.

But TSJ doesn't know how to flop and whine.

You can’t blame the University for following the policy that was in place at that time!! Since this has happened they have updated and changed this policy!! I can’t believe how our fan base acts sometimes!! I am proud to call myself a Illini fan for 59 years!! But it kills me when our fan base shows their ignorance sometimes!! I thought we were smarter than that!!

SescIllini said:

Shannon from day one said he didn't do it, didn't know the person, wasn't going to plea or settle.

The DA was trying to peddle her lies and bullcrap of a case and there were no takers.Major stupidity displayed by her and her team....a bunch of dummies.

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People need to do prison time, and it ain't Terrence Shannon.

chiefini said:

I don’t tweet, but if I did, this is what I’d say to TSJ today: Terrence, I think I can speak for most of Illini Nation when I say we are so glad and thankful your nightmare is over. We have been heartsick that this girl and her accusation, this despicable D.A., incompetent police, and their inept prosecution and the accompanying disgraceful, loathsome behavior of some “journalists” and too many “fans” led to so many months of stress, anguish, and grief for you and your family. We are also devastated that although you deserved it, your hard work and determination to be the best player on the court did not result in the accolades you definitely earned, especially the honors of First Team All-American and a raised banner. We are thrilled the jury believed, as we have all along, that you are innocent. We are incredibly proud of you as you have demonstrated courage, class, and grace through this whole horrible ordeal while you persevered to show the rest of the world that you are not only a superior basketball player, but truly a young man of character, as you always have been. We continue to hope and pray that the rest of your dreams, including succeeding in the NBA, come true, and you’ll receive the rewards and future that you’ll deserve. Terrence, you are a brave warrior, a true Fighting Illini, a Winner, and we in Illini Nation will forever be your fans.

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Amen Sister. Amen!!