D.A. Will Not Reopen SDSU Fraternity Case

New information from San Diego State University police will not cause the district attorney’s office to reopen its investigation of an 18-year-old woman’s claim that she was raped at a campus fraternity party in November.

Steven Casey, special assistant to San Diego County Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller, said Thursday that four statements forwarded by police Monday contain no information that would change Miller’s Dec. 5 refusal to file criminal charges in the case.

“There’s certainly nothing out of this material that came over belatedly that would enhance the prosecutability of this case,” Casey said.

The 18-year-old sorority pledge has told police she was sexually assaulted by three men in a bedroom at the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house during the early morning hours of Nov. 15, after a party between Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity and Delta Gamma sorority.

Miller declined to file criminal charges when he concluded that prosecutors could not prove that a rape occurred. But the university last week expelled the fraternity from campus for five years after a panel found it guilty of sex and alcohol violations.

The new material sent to Miller included a statement given Saturday by a Grossmont Hospital physician who examined the woman and three accounts from witnesses at the party. The only new information was testimony from one of the witnesses that the woman smoked marijuana that evening, Casey said.

Police interviewed the physician Saturday because his original handwritten statement was illegible, SDSU spokesman Sue Raney said. They sent the three witnesses’ accounts, taken in December, to the district attorney when they realized that prosecutors had received that testimony orally but not in writing, she said.