WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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The Monroe County Prosecutor’s Office released a statement today expressing its frustrations over a case involving a former IU student and two separate accusations of rape. The former student, John Enochs, spent one day in jail and will serve one year of probation after pleading guilty to battery with moderate injury as part of a plea deal. Both of the rape charges against him were dismissed by the prosecutors due to “evidentiary problems.”
The most recent incident was in April of 2015. According to court documents obtained by FOX59, a woman claimed she had been raped at the fraternity house Delta Tau Delta, but didn’t know the alleged attacker. Security footage showed her entering a private room with Enochs and leaving alone 24 minutes later. Health officials said she had suffered a laceration to her genitals. While this case was under investigation, a second incident from 2013 resurfaced. The woman from that case agreed to assist the police, and DNA evidence and witness statements again led police to Enochs.
According to the statement released by the prosecutor’s office, the initial decision to charge Enochs was based heavily on the fact that there were two complaints against the same defendant, made years apart from one another. The statement explains that both cases had to be presented separately, and law dictates that a jury for one case wasn’t allowed to know about the other rape charge. This made it difficult for the prosecutors to pursue either of the accusations, as the investigations revealed that “neither case, standing alone, presented sufficient evidence to prove rape.”
The prosecutor’s office stated that the 2013 charge was dropped because the complaining witness could not remember much of the alleged rape and the witnesses to it “could not recall important events due to the passage of time and the consumption of alcohol.” Photographs were also discovered that went against the complaining witness’s statements.
In the more recent case, the DNA evidence was dismissed because it was “problematic” and prevented any attempts to prove that Enochs was the cause of the witness’s injury. According to the statement, video evidence also emerged that did not support the complaining witness’s assertions of forcible rape. Because of the conflicting and insufficient evidence for either case, the prosecutors dropped the charges against Enochs and instead pursued a plea deal. The statement from the prosecutor’s office says that Enochs originally entered a plea of guilty to Battery as a Level 6 Felony, and the decision to enter it as a misdemeanor was “within the Court’s discretion.”
Bloomington lawyer Katharine Liell, who defended Enochs in court, called the charges against him “sensationalized and false.” In her statement, she says that her client should never have been charged with the rape cases, as he did not commit the crimes.
