October 12, 1996: Christina Heaslet has sex with fellow student Nathaniel Lewis in her dormitory room at Akron University. She sees him out at the front desk then tells the resident coordinator for the dormitory she has been raped. This woman calls the police; Heaslet declines to speak to them or to press charges. She is taken to a hospital but then changes her mind. Lewis is arrested the following day. He is charged with rape. Several weeks before the trial date he receives an anonymous letter which contains xeroxed copies of excerpts from Heaslet’s diary, pages which imply she consented or even that she stitched him up. It remains to be seen who sent these pages. In spite of this clearly exculpatory evidence, on June 6, 1997 he is convicted, and on July 16, 1997 he is sentenced to eight years. The judge had excluded some of this evidence under the state’s rape shield law. Lewis appeals.
On October 2, 2002, the Supreme Court of the United States quashes his conviction.
This article by Hans Sherrer shows this sordid affair had a relatively happy ending for Nathaniel Lewis. My apologies for the way the two pages came out when reformatted.
Back To False Rape Timeline