SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — Former NFL defensive tackle Dana Stubblefield's rape conviction was overturned by an appellate court on Thursday, court documents show.
The 54-year-old played in the NFL from 1993-2003, spending seven of those seasons with the San Francisco 49ers, three with Washington, and one with the Oakland Raiders. His impressive list of accolades includes an NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year award, an NFL Defensive Player of the Year award, and a Super Bowl title.
Stubblefield was convicted in 2020 of raping a woman who interviewed to babysit his kids in Morgan Hill in 2015 and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. His lawyers, however, have used the California Racial Justice Act of 2020 to overturn the conviction.
In April 2015, the victim, a 31-year-old intellectually disabled woman living with her mother in Hollister and identified in the lawsuit as Jane Doe, was contacted by Stubblefield through the website SitterCity.com. They arranged to meet at Stubblefield's house in Morgan Hill for an interview.
According to court documents, she arrived and stayed at the house for 23 minutes. After she left, she received a text from Stubblefield asking her to come back so he could pay her for her time. She stayed for another 30 minutes and left again, confirming that she would babysit his kids the following Saturday.
Court documents noted that Doe's intellectual disability complicated the case.
"Doe’s scores in IQ tests were in the second percentile, and she suffered from a language disorder that hampered her ability to speak and testify clearly. Her responses to questions were often nonresponsive, unintelligible, or syntactically fractured. At times, she could not verbally express her response, so she wrote it on paper," documents said.
According to Doe's testimony, she and Stubbleifled discussed payment and services during her first visit to his home. When she returned minutes later, Stubblefield allegedly locked the door and took her into a dark room.
The ex-NFL star was accused of pointing a gun at her, threatening to kill her, and having sex with her after she told him "no." He gave her $80 in cash, after which she left the home and drove straight to a Morgan Hill police station, according to the documents.
Doe testified that she did not know who Stubblefield was, or even what the NFL or 49ers were. However, she had made Facebook posts in the past discussing football, the 49ers, and the Miami Dolphins.
Doe took a sexual assault examination, which aligned with what she told police about being raped. Stubblefield's DNA was found on her breast, authorities said. Police interviewed Stubblefield in 2016, and he said that he never had sex with a babysitting candidate. He later argued in court that Doe consented to sex in exchange for money.
Two other women have accused Stubblefield of sexual assault in the past, court documents say.
The court overturned the conviction, saying prosecutors had said that police never searched Stubblefield's Morgan Hill home (and never found any guns) in part because of Stubblefield's race.
The prosecutor gave three reasons as to why the home was never searched: because Doe hadn't identified Stubblefield, because Stubblefield is a celebrity, and because he is African-American. The trial happened weeks after the murder of George Floyd, and the prosecutor said searching Stubblefield's home would "open up a storm of controversy."
Stubblefield claims that the prosecutor's statement used his race against him and appealed to racial biases.
"The statement implied the house might have been searched and a gun found had Stubblefield not been Black, and that Stubblefield therefore gained an undeserved advantage at trial because he was a Black man," court documents stated.
The court determined that the conviction was "legally invalid" due to the Racial Justice Act. The Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office can now decide whether to re-prosecute the case.
