__Former student charged with indecent assault, dismissed from Navy__
Kenny Ray Morrison, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, was sentenced April 10 to two years of confinement and dismissal from the Navy. The 24 year-old former Academy football player from Texas was found guilty of committing indecent assault and conduct unbecoming an officer. He faced up to 10 years in prison, and prosecutors petitioned for at least three to five years of confinement. A jury of seven Marine Corps and Navy officers, with Captain Daniel King serving as president of the jury, sentenced Morrison.
p. Although he was not found guilty of sexual misconduct charges, the issue stems from alleged assault of a female midshipman.
“I will never recover what I could have been, what I would have been…I’ve lost a part of myself,” she said according to The Washington Post.
p. According to The Associated Press, Morrison has said that he was looking for a place to sleep in a hotel and stumbled into her room by accident. He maintains that the sex was consensual and that she came on to him. The female midshipman has said that she had fallen asleep and woke up to find him in the room.
p. “Before his sentencing at Washington Navy Yard, the former linebacker emotionally read an unsworn statement during which, between sniffles, he took a measure of responsibility, saying: ‘I put myself in this situation.’ He offered direct apologies to his family and those connected with the Naval Academy, but he made no reference to his accusers or his crime,” Raymond McCaffrey of the Washington Post wrote.
p. William M. Ferris, Morrison’s defense attorney, plans to appeal the verdict and maintains that the sex was consensual.