Jury finds former KU student not guilty of rape

Post last updated at 2:16 p.m. Friday, June 30:

A Douglas County jury on Friday found Thomas J. Cormier, 22, not guilty of a 2021 rape.

The case required jurors to weigh what is needed to establish — or more importantly, to revoke — consent. 

The instructions given to the jury said it was not a defense that the defendant did not know or have reason to know that the woman was overcome by force or fear. 

Jurors — four women and eight men — heard evidence Tuesday and Wednesday, then deliberated for most of the day Thursday. They came back and reached their verdict around 11:15 Friday morning.

The woman burst into tears and left the courtroom after the verdict was announced.

In August 2021, Cormier moved into the apartment complex where the woman worked. They had mutual friends, and they had a conversation one day that October when Cormier had received some packages, which the woman retrieved for him. Both of them were students at the University of Kansas.

The woman, who was 21 at the time, said she had started communicating with Cormier via Snapchat the day before they met up at his apartment on Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021. 

They shared a margarita, and they were talking for a little while before he grabbed her face and started kissing her, she said. She was OK with the kissing, and after a little while they both took their shirts off. He was wearing a T-shirt for a while, and she kept her bra on, but a photo he took in the middle of their interaction showed him shirtless. 

When they were making out on his bed,  the woman had thought Cormier was reaching his hands around her to hold her, but then Cormier took her leggings off — ”aggressively,” she described. She said he was straddling her and put one hand on her throat; then he moved her underwear to the side and started fingering her. 

Under Kansas law, rape includes any vaginal penetration, however slight, with a finger, the male sex organ or any object. 

The woman said Cormier had held her throat a few times that night, not using a lot of pressure but it was uncomfortable. 

She was OK with the fingering, too, but then it started to hurt and she realized she was bleeding. On the witness stand, as she started to say it felt like he was scraping her, she lost her composure momentarily. 

“I didn’t know what to do, and I was scared at that point because it was getting aggressive,” the woman testified.

When she realized she was bleeding, she testified, she got up to go to the bathroom, where she found her underwear bloody. She said it was not her period. She also said that when she looked in the mirror, she saw blood on her chin and chest, possibly from Cormier switching hands while fingering her and holding her throat. She cleaned it off. She said she was embarrassed, and she felt disgusting. 

Cormier soon came into the bathroom uninvited, the woman said, and asked if she was OK. He testified that he was concerned about her because she’d told him she was bleeding, but he hadn’t seen any blood. 

Cormier testified that in the bathroom, the woman was terribly embarrassed, and he asked if he could take a photo of her. He said he didn’t want her to feel disgusting, and taking the photo was an attempt to reassure her that she looked good. Lawrence police were not able to recover that photo from Cormier’s phone, but he accessed it by logging into his Snapchat account on another phone. 

Withdrawing consent

The two then went back into the bedroom. The woman said she was trying to put her leggings back on when Cormier took them out of her hands and started kissing her again. She said he laid her back down on the bed and got on top of her again. 

She said Cormier then took her hands above her head and wrapped her wrists with a belt that was tied to the bedframe. She said she was surprised and scared at that point, and she didn’t know what to do. She said she asked something to the effect of “Where did that come from?” They both testified that he did not ask her permission before wrapping the belt around her wrists.

She said Cormier then started performing oral sex on her and fingering her. After a minute or two, she was able to get her wrists free, and she said she tried to push his head and hands away a few times before finally saying “Thomas, no,” as she pushed him away again. 

Then, they both testified, he said “But your legs aren’t shaking yet.” She said she was trying to come up with a way to get out of the situation, and finally said she needed to go to the bathroom again. 

Cormier testified that after she told him to stop, he continued for two or three seconds, said what he said and then got up. 

In response to a question from the jury Thursday during deliberations, the judge wrote that a defendant may be convicted of rape if there is initial consent but that consent is withdrawn, the withdrawal of consent is communicated to the defendant, and the defendant continues.

The woman said after she came out of the bathroom again, she was trying to leave, but Cormier kept saying he wanted to have sex with her, but he didn’t have a condom. To try to get out of the situation, the woman said they could hang out again the next day. She said he pushed her against the wall next to the door, kissed her, and said “Now you can leave.”

She went straight to a friend’s apartment in the same complex. The friend testified about how distraught she was. He took the woman to the hospital, and another friend called the police.

Forensic evidence

The case did not rely heavily upon physical evidence, but it was presented to the jury. 

Lawrence police officers collected the woman’s clothes at the hospital. Her underwear was quite bloody, she had some blood on her shirt, and her bra and leggings also had some spots of blood. 

Cormier’s jeans, which also had some bloodstains, were collected. Investigators also took the belt, his bedsheets and a mattress cover that appeared to have bloodstains. 

The nurse who performed the woman’s sexual assault exam at LMH Health that night, Olivia Boldridge, said the woman had several lacerations in her vaginal area. An expert nurse the defense hired to review the case, Jennifer Johnson, disputed the injuries Boldridge had documented but said she could not rule out injuries inside the woman’s vagina because the photos she’d been provided were not clear enough. Boldridge said the blood was not consistent with period blood; Johnson said that based on the exam, there was no way of knowing where the blood came from. 

Boldridge also testified and showed photos of some areas of petechiae, pinpoint-size spots caused by bleeding under the skin, on the woman’s neck. Boldridge said she observed areas of petechiae on both sides of the woman’s neck consistent with strangulation; Johnson said she did not see petechiae on one side of the woman’s neck, and what was on the other side could have been a hickey. 

Cormier denied holding the woman’s throat but said he had probably kissed and sucked her neck, which could have caused the petechiae. 

Elizabeth Sawaya, a forensic scientist with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, testified that a partial DNA profile in blood found on Cormier’s bedsheet was consistent with the woman’s DNA. 

Defense argument

Defense attorneys Christopher Joseph and Dionne Scherff, of Joseph Hollander & Craft, emphasized Johnson’s opinion of the woman’s SANE exam. They also pointed to some missing pieces in the police investigation.

The apartment complex had fairly new surveillance cameras installed, but police didn’t collect the footage. Scherff said the footage could have shown the woman’s demeanor — whether she had run from the apartment upset, as she said, or not. In closing arguments, she said the woman regretted her decision to go to Cormier’s apartment.

Deputy District Attorney Joshua Seiden asked jurors in his closing arguments, “Does surrender constitute consent?” 

Seiden asked jurors to consider why the woman would have subjected herself to multiple interviews with police and the sexual assault exam, which included having dozens of photos taken during her pelvic exam that would ultimately be passed around by a bunch of strangers. He asked them to use their common sense to determine if this case was happening because of regret as Scherff had said. 

Some of the jurors stuck around for nearly two hours to talk with the attorneys after their verdict was announced.

On his way out Friday afternoon, Joseph said the jurors had dealt with a difficult set of facts. He said he was impressed that jurors had picked up on some things that he wouldn’t have expected them to, and he appreciated how thoughtful they were. He said this was a horrible situation and there were no winners, but the burden to prove guilt in a criminal case is extremely high.

Seiden and Assistant District Attorney Samantha Foster prosecuted the case.

“Each and every day, we are reminded of how important it is to advocate on behalf of sexual assault survivors,” Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez said in an email Friday afternoon. “We will continue to stand with sexual assault survivors and seek justice.”

Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark (at) lawrencekstimes (dot) com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.

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