WASHINGTON — A military judge found a former U.S. Naval Academy football player not guilty of a sexual assault charge Thursday at the conclusion of a three-day trial.
The judge, Col. Daniel Daugherty, acquitted Joshua Tate of Nashville, Tenn., of one count of aggravated sexual assault. Tate chose to be tried by a judge rather than a military jury. During the trial, prosecutors argued that the woman Tate was accused of assaulting, a Naval Academy classmate, was too drunk to consent to sexual activity. Tate’s attorneys disagreed.
More than a dozen witnesses testified at Tate’s trial. That included Tate’s classmate who testified for more than five hours and said she didn’t remember being sexually assaulted after a night of heavy drinking but heard from others she had had sex with multiple partners at the party. She said she confronted Tate, who confirmed they’d had sex.
Prosecutors initially accused not only Tate but also two other students, both of them former football players, of sexually assaulting the woman during a 2012 party at an off-campus house in Annapolis, Md., where the school is located. Tate was the only student ultimately brought to court-martial, the military’s equivalent of a trial.