A Ramsey County judge has acquitted a former Bethel University football player of sexually assaulting a fellow student in 2018, a ruling that follows a jury’s not guilty verdict in an assault case involving him and another student.

Judge Joy Bartscher on Thursday found Gideon Osamwonyi Erhabor, now 27 of McKinney, Texas, not guilty of felony third-degree criminal sexual conduct and gross misdemeanor fifth-degree criminal sexual conduct involving a then-18-year-old woman in his dorm room on Sept. 11, 2018.

In her ruling, the judge wrote the state did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt the interaction between the two was nonconsensual.

It was one of three sexual assault cases Ramsey County prosecutors filed against Erhabor on Dec. 3, 2019. Two other then-Bethel women also reported to law enforcement on separate days in June 2019 that Erhabor had assaulted them in the fall and winter of 2018.

A jury in October 2022 found Erhabor not guilty of third-degree criminal sexual conduct for an incident with a then-21-year-old at a house party in Shoreview on Dec. 8, 2018.

The third case against Erhabor remains pending in court under the same charge, with a status conference now scheduled for June 27. He is accused of sexually assaulting a then-19-year-old at a house party in Roseville on Oct. 7, 2018.

Ramsey County sheriff’s deputies interviewed Erhabor about the three incidents in his hometown of McKinney, Texas, in August 2019. While he acknowledged having sex with the three women, he said all the interactions were consensual, according to the criminal complaints.

Erhabor was arrested in his Texas hometown a day after the charges were filed and released from the Ramsey County jail after posting a $30,000 bond about a month later.

He was a student at the Christian college in Arden Hills from the fall of 2017 to fall 2018, when he was a running back on the football team.

Earlier mistrial

The court trial followed a January 2024 mistrial, which was caused when the prosecution accidentally played for jurors on the first day of testimony an unredacted audio recording of the woman’s interview with police that referenced the other two cases.

Earlier, in 2020, Judge David Brown denied the prosecution’s motion to introduce evidence from the other two cases, known in court as Spreigl evidence, during the trial.

Despite the similarities in the three cases, Brown wrote in his decision, there are what he called “significant differences.” He noted how the other two cases allegedly happened off-campus. He wrote the women described being “suddenly and significantly intoxicated whereas in this case the victim was not intoxicated.”

Four months after Judge Bartscher declared the mistrial, she denied a defense motion to dismiss the case, ruling the error by the prosecution “does not demonstrate any bad faith or intentional misconduct.”

Erhabor waived his right to a jury trial, electing to have Bartscher decide the verdict.

The court trial was held on Jan. 9, with the state calling the woman and her friend to the witness stand. Introduced as evidence were the police statements from Erhabor and the woman and a transcript of last year’s jury trial. Bartscher heard oral arguments from the defense and prosecution, and then received written arguments from both sides. She took the case under advisement on March 17.

Testimony

According to Thursday’s findings of fact, conclusions of law and order:

During a house party, the woman was dared to randomly approach him and give him a kiss. She testified that it was a “ballsy” thing for her to do, and her heart raced when she kissed him.

They exchanged Snapchat contact information and over the next several days messaged each other through the app. Erhabor invited her over for a date night at his dorm room. The woman testified that she told Erhabor, “I do not want to have sex,” before he picked her up at her dorm.

She testified that she was in his dorm room for about an hour, that they watched a movie, but as she testified, “not really.” They kissed, and he rubbed his hands up and down her legs, which she was OK with.

She previously testified that although she was uncomfortable, “it wasn’t anything that I told him he couldn’t do.” She also said that she “froze” and was “pretty dissociated” and that she was having an “out-of-body experience” and she felt out of control of her body. “She said that it was a lack of being present in the moment and trying to take herself out of it, as if to say she is not sure what she told him while this event occurred,” Thursday’s court document read.

She also testified that she did not know for sure whether she said “no” out loud or in her head. She testified that after he stopped, she told him about how she was sexually assaulted when she was 14 years old.

In his interview with deputies, Erhabor said he stopped the consensual sex twice because she was crying.

The woman testified that after the movie was over Erhabor took her home and she kissed him — after he asked — before getting out of the car. She messaged a friend and told her she needed help.

The friend testified the woman was crying and told her that when she was having sex, she did not like it and that she froze partway through. Her friend was not certain whether the woman told Erhabor “no” verbally or that she said “no” into a pillow.

The woman did not want to report the incident to the authorities at Bethel, however; her friend’s roommate reported it to the resident hall advisor, who made a mandatory report. The woman “minimally cooperated” with the school’s investigation.

‘It’s a good result for him’

The woman’s testimony differed in several ways and is different or inconsistent with the testimony of her friend, Judge Bartscher wrote. The woman’s testimony was “sometimes flippant, and somewhat disrespectful toward the process. This could be a product of her mental health and could also be a sign of her insincerity.”

The judge wrote the woman testified she gave her friend just the essentials, while her friend testified the woman told her that she “froze partway through sex.”

There is “no question that (the woman) was upset,” the judge concluded. “There is no question that she may have done something that she did not like. But it is not clear beyond a reasonable doubt, to the court, that what she did was non-consensual.”

On Friday, Erhabor’s attorney, assistant public defender Daniel Gonnerman, said he is “happy for Mr. Erhabor. It’s a good result for him.”

Gonnerman said he emailed Erhabor the verdict and “he expressed his appreciation for the outcome.”

Dennis Gerhardstein, Ramsey County Attorney’s Office spokesman, said in an emailed statement that, “While we are disappointed in the outcome, we respect the court’s ruling in this case. It took great courage for the victim in this case to come forward and testify.”