press release<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cWe recognize there are those who fear individuals with celebrity status or a position of prominence can avoid prosecution,\u201d District Attorney John Wentworth said via a statement. \u201cNot in Clackamas County. This case demonstrates my office prosecutes criminal acts regardless of the offender\u2019s community status.\u201d<\/p>\n
McLemore will be sentenced July 9.<\/p>\n
The sexual assault occurred Oct. 3, 2021, after a party at then-teammate Robert Covington\u2019s house in Lake Oswego. The victim had been drinking heavily and was \u201chammered unconscious drunk\u201d that night, prosecutor Scott Healy told jurors. It was the most alcohol the woman ever had to drink in her life and the most intoxicated she had ever been, Healy said.<\/p>\n
The victim vomited earlier that evening, and witnesses said she had difficulty walking, slurred speech and could barely lift her head, Healy said.<\/p>\n
The victim passed out on a large living room couch around 2 a.m. Later, McLemore began sleeping on the same couch. At around 6 a.m., the victim regained partial consciousness when McLemore sexually penetrated her with his fingers, then began having sexual intercourse with her.<\/p>\n
The victim was \u201cfading in and out\u201d of consciousness, frightened and traumatized, Healy said. Later that day, she sought a specialized medical examination for victims of sexual assault.<\/p>\n
\u201c(The defendant) needs to be held accountable for what he did,\u201d the victim said during her trial testimony. \u201cYou can\u2019t do that to somebody, let alone somebody that you don\u2019t know either. You don\u2019t do that to people and just be able to get away with it. I don\u2019t care who you are.\u201d<\/p>\n
McLemore\u2019s attorneys, Lisa Maxfield and Kris Winemiller of Pacific Northwest Law, LLP, couldn\u2019t be reached for comment by\u00a0The Athletic at the time of publication.<\/p>\n
McLemore\u2019s attorneys disputed the victim\u2019s account of events, claiming she initiated sexual contact and consented to it. His attorneys asserted that although the victim and McLemore were intoxicated at the time of the encounter, the victim was sober enough to consent.<\/p>\n
The seventh pick in the 2013 NBA Draft by the Sacramento Kings, McLemore played for the Memphis Grizzlies, Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Lakers before his last season with the Trail Blazers in 2021-22.<\/p>\n
(Photo: Jonathan Bachman \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former NBA guard Ben McLemore was found guilty Thursday of raping and sexually assaulting a 21-year-old woman after…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":37258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,1260,50,3133,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-37257","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-portland-trail-blazers","12":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114793334051019531","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}