Brandon Banks, 23, was sentenced to 15 years for his part in the 2013 dorm room gang rape
Former Vanderbilt football player Brandon Banks was sentenced to at least 15 years in prison for his involvement in the 2013 gang rape of an unconscious female student, Criminal Court Judge Monte Watkins announced Friday.
In June, Banks was found guilty of one count of aggravated rape and one count of aggravated sexual battery. He was found not guilty on five other counts.
Banks, 23, was one of four ex-players who took part in the assault of the 21-year-old woman inside the Nashville, Tennessee university dormitory.
The victim’s boyfriend at the time, Brandon Vandenburg, and his colleague Cory Batey, both 23, were the other two men charged for their active role in the gang rape.
The incident that was captured on a hallway surveillance video shows Vandenburg carrying his asleep girlfriend into the room the evening of June 23, 2013.
Vandenburg reportedly handed his teammates condoms before he suggested they engage in the act with her numbed body, according to prosecutors.
Brandon Vandenburg, 23, (left) was sentenced to 17 years in prison for his role in the gang rape and Corey Batey, 23, (right) 15 years
Banks alleged he was bullied into the act by his friends, but the footage shows otherwise
The rape was captured by hallway surveillance video while photos were later found on a cellphone
The woman said Vandenburg gave her a blue-colored drink the night of the rape
The men were shown carrying the woman’s unconscious body into the room the evening of June 23, 2013
Banks claimed he was bullied into the act by his friends, while the footage shows him assaulting the woman with an object as his teammates smiled and laughed.
Assistant District Attorney Roger Moore said Banks left the victim lying ‘like a piece of trash laid out for the garbage collectors to pick up’ following the alleged ‘bullying’ incident.
When discussing Banks’ claims, Moore said while (bullying) isn’t ethical, it doesn’t give Banks the ‘legal defense to commit’ a crime.
‘Particularly not an aggravated rape, an aggravated sexual battery … I mean if that’s the case, then we’d have the ‘football team defense’,’ Moore said.
The victim testified five times in court previously but was not present during Friday’s sentencing.
District Attorney General Jan Norman read a statement on the victim’s behalf, saying, ‘most of the horrible recollections that I live with are of Mr. Banks’
Norman said ‘four years later (Banks) is still proving himself to be the person he is in those photos and videos’
Banks’ cellphone held 23 of 41 images of the gang rape, which he claimed Vandenburg forced of him to capture.
‘The only conclusion is that he either hasn’t been paying attention to anything I’ve said or done over the last four years, or that he is doing it in spite of me and the pain he continues to cause,’ the victim wrote in a statement.
‘It doesn’t matter how righteous he continues to feel, he is doing it against the will of the person he gang-raped in the first place.’
The woman was overcome emotional when asked to recount the evening she struggled to remember.
She said she was alongside her boyfriend out at Tin Roof Bar that night when he handed her a blue-colored drink, which prosecutors believe may have contained the date rape drug.
‘The next thing I remember is waking up alone in a room I didn’t recognize,’ she recalled.
Banks claimed when he noticed she was passed out, he suggested the men take her to the hospital, but they insisted on continuing the act.
Brandon Banks’ father sits in court as he hears his charged with five counts of aggravated rape and two counts of aggravated sexual battery in June
‘When you’re a freshman, it’s called a body count they keep. When you’re on campus it’s how many girls can you sleep with.’ Banks said.
Banks’ cellphone held 23 of 41 images of the gang rape, which he claimed Vandenburg forced of him to capture.
‘He told me to take pictures, too, so I take pictures,’ he said.
‘Most of the horrible recollections that I live with are of Mr. Banks,’ Assistant District Attorney General Jan Norman read on behalf of the rape victim Friday.
‘His attempts to minimize the things he did in surveillance and cellphone recordings after the fact do not change what I have seen and what four juries have seen.
‘Four years later he is still proving himself to be the person he is in those photos and videos. I ask this court not to use his transparent attempts to excuse himself as justification for leniency.’
Former football player Jaborian ‘Tip’ McKenzie was also present at the time of the rape. He pleaded not guilty
McKenzie testified against his former teammates during day three of former Vanderbilt football player Cory Batey’s trial in Nashville, Tenn., Wednesday, April 6, 2016
Vandenburg was already sentenced to 17 years in prison while Batey was sentenced to 15 years.
The fourth player inside the form room, Jaborian McKenzie, was charged with the crime but pleaded not guilty.
McKenzie has testified for the prosecution against his three former teammates.
Prosecutors are currently in the process of determining a way to resolve his part in the case, according to the Tennessean.