FORT WORTH
A jury found a mixed martial arts fighter, Abdul Razak Alhassan, not guilty of sexual assault on Friday.
Alhassan was accused of raping two women inside one of their homes in Saginaw. Alhassan, a 34-year-old MMA fighter, allegedly brought the two women home from the Varsity Tavern in Fort Worth, where he was working as a bouncer on March 23, 2018.
Testimony in his trial began Tuesday in a Tarrant County courtroom. The jury began deliberating Friday morning and came back with a verdict about 11:30 a.m., said Brandon Barnett, part of the team defending Alhassan.
It was not an easy case, according to witness testimony from an investigator who looked into the allegation.
“There’s no winners in these cases,” Barnett said. “They are not fun for either side.”
Barnett said he spoke to jurors following the announcement of the verdict, who said they believed that investigators could have done a better job checking into details Alhassan provided during an interview with police detectives that was recorded after his arrest.
Jurors saw that video from the police interview played multiple times during the trial. Alhassan told a detective that one of his accusers entered her phone number into his phone after the alleged sexual assault, and the Saginaw police sergeant investigating the case testified that he never had Alhassan’s phone examined to determine if that was true.
“The jurors thought that Alhassan was honest and genuine during the interrogation,” Barnett said.
During a morning break in testimony Wednesday, Alhassan was surrounded by a group of friends outside the courtroom, who gathered together in prayer. Alhassan, who was in the center of the circle, angrily pointed a finger toward the courtroom and said the police botched the investigation into these allegations.
His coach, Steven Wright, stood in the center of the circle and endeavored to calm him down.
“We don’t want to do any cursing out here now,” Wright said. “We want to show love.”
What’s next for Alhassan
Barnett said Alhassan was very emotional after the verdict was read and thankful to have his wife and friends with him in support during the entire trial.
“He’s been waiting two years to clear his name in court,” Barnett said.
During a hearing to have Alhassan’s electronic monitoring device removed, his UFC head coach, Sayif Saud, testified that he considered the athlete one of the top 10 welterweight fighters in the world.
“He’s not a prospect; he’s a proven commodity,” Saud testified.
Barnett agreed that Alhassan’s next step would be to get his career back on track.
“His last fight was in September 2018,” Barnett said. “This allegation put his UFC career on hold for about two years. They (UFC officials) were waiting to see what was going to happen. I think he was one of the top welterweights in the country. He was an up-and-coming fighter. He’s in shape. He’s been training. I think if he can get another fight, he would feel real good to get an opportunity.“
Wright said he believes the fighter can be back in the ring with a worthy opponent in the next two months, or with six or seven weeks’ time to prepare.
Alhassan is communicating with his manager and working to get the word out that he has been cleared of all charges, Wright said. The team is hoping to get a message out to the mixed martial arts community soon, Wright said.
Wright said Alhassan was one of the top contenders in his class with proven power.
“If we can get a fight with a good fighter, someone who wins in the UFC, we’ll be ready,” Wright said.
The accusation
The two women — then 20 and 22 years old — were at a party for an off-duty Fort Worth police officer and became more and more intoxicated as the night wore on, according to witness testimony. Alhassan provided the underage woman with a way into the club, and according to prosecutors, extracted payment from the women by sexually assaulting them after he took them home.
One of the women told the jury that Alhassan forced her down on a bed, re-positioned her clothing and raped her while members of her family were asleep just feet down the hall from her bedroom. Then, the woman said, she watched as Alhassan moved across the darkened room and sexually assaulted her motionless, intoxicated friend.
Joshua Yates, the Fort Worth police officer who was celebrating his birthday with the two women, told the jury that as the suspect was admiring the women as they danced on stage, Alhassan turned to him and said — “’If you don’t hit that, I will.’”
The jury also saw video from the Varsity Tavern that showed one of the women making out with the suspect in the hallway. But Allyson Kucera, Tarrant County prosecutor, cautioned the jury from jumping to conclusions.
Becoming a sexual assault victim is not the penalty for drinking too much at a bar, Kucera told the jury.
“Do what is right for intoxicated women,” Kucera said. “The consequences they should have had from that night is a hangover.”
The ‘assembly line of justice’
Terri Moore, who was also defending Alhassan, apologized for being hard on the alleged victims during her closing arguments, but told the jury that the victims were lying.
“How many lies are you willing to let them tell?” Moore asked the jury. “The answer should be not one single lie.”
What rapist would go into a house where a mother, stepfather, three grown brothers and a future sister-in-law were sleeping, Moore asked the jury. What victim would allow herself to be assaulted knowing that her family of protectors were nearby and not call out for help, Moore asked seconds later.
Moore also questioned the timing of the accusations, which came almost a week after the sexual assault allegedly occurred. The woman who told authorities that she was awake when she was raped said nothing to police when her friend went to the hospital for a sexual assault exam, Moore said.
The same woman said nothing to authorities about what happened at the bar and at her house when she went for her own sexual assault exam, Moore said. It was not until she was being interviewed by Kerry Adcock, the Fort Worth detective who initially handled the case, that the woman told someone her story, Moore said.
Adcock told the woman that the delay in making the accusation would cause a problem for the investigation, Moore said. The woman told Adcock that the police who talked to her earlier did not ask her the right questions, Moore said.
The woman did not tell Adcock that she delayed making the accusation because she was frozen, afraid or traumatized by another sexual assault that had occurred when she was a child, all circumstances she later offered as reasons for not reaching out sooner, Moore said.
“Take this case off the assembly line,” Moore said. “The detective did not take this case off the assembly line. He kicked the can down the road on the assembly line of justice. ... Anytime these accusations are made frivolously, real rape victims are hurt by these BS stories. And this is a BS story if I’ve ever heard one.”
‘Be sure to pick a real drunk one’
Kimberly D’Avignon, a Tarrant County prosecutor, countered that the DNA evidence the jury heard backed up the story the victims have been telling since March 2018.
Scientists found Alhassan’s DNA in the biological samples authorities collected from each of the victims, according to the testimony of Farah Plopper, a forensic data analyst at the University of North Texas Health Science Center.
During a video of a police interview, Alhassan told an investigator that he had consensual sex with one of the women, but did not have sex with the other woman who was in the same room, and who had apparently passed out after a night of drinking.
Defense attorneys offered several theories to explain how Alhassan’s DNA and sperm was found on and inside the victims, but none of them hold any water, D’Avignon said.
Every bit of evidence collected by the Saginaw police investigators was turned over and exposed to the scrutiny of DNA testing, D’Avignon said. The victims have nothing to gain from lying, she said.
Defense attorneys offered the theory that one of the women had a jealous and abusive boyfriend and this story was made up for his benefit, D’Avignon said. But it would have been easier for the victims to say nothing because there would have been no way for a jealous boyfriend to know what really happened on that night in March, according to D’Avignon.
“We don’t have to come up with ‘what if’ scenarios,” D’Avignon told the jury. “Each and every thing (the victims) talk about shows up in the evidence. These girls are not criminal masterminds, and they are not Oscar-winning actresses. They were telling the truth, and the truth is that they did not want to be here.”
“Do not give the defendant the benefit of the doubt because these girls were drunk, because then you will be saying to everyone, ‘be sure to pick a real drunk one because then that will be reasonable doubt,’” D’Avignon said.
This story was originally published March 06, 2020 12:44 PM.
