Jury rules not guilty in rape trial

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By Jayme Lawson/SPECIAL TO THE COMMERCIAL
Tuesday, February 3, 2009 10:08 AM CST

Rodney Daniels, 30, of Warren, one of two men facing rape charges, has been found not guilty in Bradley County Circuit Court.

A second suspect in the case, Keatron Ridgell, 24, also of Warren, is awaiting trial.
Daniels was acquitted following at two-day trial, which ended Jan. 23.

According to testimony, an 18-year-old woman reported that she was raped by Ridgell last year at a friend’s apartment while four other people were upstairs.

After being raped by Ridgell, she said, he left with her cell phone, and his phone was left behind. The victim testified she called Ridgell by dialing her number on his phone. He returned and “grabbed hold of her and made her leave with him,” according to Prosecutor Frank Spain.

She alleged that Ridgell took her to another apartment, where she was taken upstairs against her will, held down by Ridgell and Daniels. With other unidentified men also in the room, she was forced to engage repeatedly in sex.

The victim’s friends who were at the apartment where the first rape allegedly occurred testified that they heard the victim call out, but when they couldn’t find her downstairs, they called her phone. The person who answered her phone led the woman’s friends to the apartment where they ran upstairs and “saw their friend being forced to have sex with people,” Spain said.

The friends left the apartment and called 911. Ridgell reportedly left the apartment before police arrived, and authorities found Daniels leaving the residence. He was questioned whether anyone else was in the apartment to which Daniels replied, “No.” When the alleged victim was located upstairs, Daniels maintained that he did not know she was upstairs and that he did not engage in sex with her.

When forensic results from a rape kit and bodily fluids located during the investigation indicated that both men had engaged in intercourse with the alleged victim, Daniels admitted that he did have sex with the woman but claimed it was consensual.