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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah's Supreme Court denied an appeal from a former Utah State University football player who was convicted of rape, ruling that his prison sentence of at least 26 years will stand.
Torrey Jordan Green, 29, was found guilty in 2019 of assaulting six women in a 10-day jury trial considering six of the seven cases against him, each filed after a different woman accused him of sexual misconduct including rape.
He argued in an appeal late last year that his trial was not fair, saying prosecutors should not have been allowed to use unrelated evidence in one case, that his attorney was ineffective, that admitted hearsay statements should have been prohibited, and that there was "cumulative error" justifying a cancellation of his convictions.
The opinion denying the appeal, written by Chief Justice Matthew Durrant, was filed on June 1. It said the Supreme Court did not find any errors and that evidence was submitted properly, and that a few statements that should have been excluded due to hearsay "were harmless."
Trial testimony from the 6 victims
Green attended USU and played football from 2011 to 2016, after which he left USU on March 5, 2016 to begin training with the NFL and was drafted to the Atlanta Falcons, the opinion written by Durrant notes.
On July 21, 2016, a first article in the Salt Lake Tribune reported that an unnamed man at USU was accused of several sexual assaults. Green was named in a subsequent article, and then he was cut from the team. Charges were not brought against Green until after a third article was published in October of 2016. Those articles were used in the trial as evidence, Durrant's opinion continues.
The chief justice's opinion upholding Green's convictions goes on to detail each woman's accounts of the assaults:
- One of the women said she met Green on Tinder in November 2013, and after dinner at his apartment she agreed to a massage, but then resisted when he forced her clothes off and raped her.
- Another woman said she met Green in October 2014 on Tinder. She said when they were at his apartment watching a movie, Green made advances which she refused. After she continued to resist, he rubbed his body against hers over clothing.
- In the same month, another woman said she met Green at the USU student center, and during a date at his apartment he started touching her inappropriately despite her requests that he stop.
- In June 2015, another woman said she met Green on Tinder. She testified Green came to her apartment because she refused the invitation to come to his home. She said she eventually asked Green to leave. The opinion said Green ignored her, followed her into her bedroom, pulled off her clothes and began raping her before falling asleep in her room.
- One woman said she also met Green at the USU student center and agreed to meet at his apartment because he had a friend with him, but the friend left and Green began to kiss her and tried to take her clothes off. She refused, but he forced her clothing off and raped her.
- Another woman said she met Green on Tinder in 2015 and he attempted to take off her clothes during a movie despite her resisting, and that he proceeded to rape her.
In multiple instances, Green made comments like "I know you want it" or "you know you'll like this," the opinion said, referring to evidence presented at trial.
Green claimed that each of the six women lied about their encounters for money, attention, help with grades or because they needed an excuse for something.
He testified at trial that four of the sexual encounters were consensual and two never happened.
Green said he broke the "law of chastity," violating religious beliefs, but did not break the law and is not a monster.
"Mr. Green put the women's credibility at issue by claiming they were lying, and the accusations of multiple similar acts of sexual misconduct by Mr. Green corroborated each woman's story," Durrant wrote in the opinion.
During the trial, Green was found guilty of charges stemming from the accounts of those six victims, including raping five different women; object rape and forcible sexual abuse of one of the five women; and sexual battery of another woman.
He was acquitted of four charges after 16 hours of jury deliberation. The dismissed charges included kidnapping and forcible sexual abuse of one woman and object rape and forcible sexual abuse of another woman.
The sentence remains
In the appeal, Green said his attorney should not have asked to try all six cases at one time but should have requested separate jury trials for each count.
Green in his appeal said there were improper references to race at the trial; he said one woman testified about not being able to be around Black men after she was raped, and prosecutors described Green as a "big, old, fast linebacker" and a "wolf in sheep's clothing" who took women to his "lair."
Utah Supreme Court judges decided in the opinion that none of those instances developed a clear racial theme, and it was not unreasonable for Green's attorney to choose to not object to them as it may have not been a worthwhile tactic.
Green was sentenced to at least five years and up to life in prison for each count of rape, and one charge of sexual battery, a class A misdemeanor with a sentence of up to a year in jail.
In addition to the rape and sexual battery charges, Green was convicted of other counts of object rape, a first-degree felony; and forcible sexual abuse, a second-degree felony. The judge ordered concurrent sentences in those counts.
Now that the Utah Supreme Court has affirmed Green's convictions, his prison sentence is no longer in question.
When he was sentenced, 1st District Judge Brian Cannell told Green: "In the eyes of the law, you are a serial rapist."
His prison sentence of at least 26 years began in March 2019, and he could serve up to life in prison depending on the decisions of the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.
