A state forensics investigator, Joann Gibb, methodically quoted from text messages that she said came from the phone of one of the defendants, Trent Mays, 17, and from the phones of friends and classmates. The messages described the inebriated girl as “dead” or as a “dead body” and stated that Mr. Mays acknowledged penetrating the girl with his fingers.
For the prosecution, the text messages were a way to project a real-time accounting of the night. Defense lawyers say that anything that happened between the girl and Mr. Mays and his co-defendant, Ma’lik Richmond, 16, was consensual.
Mr. Mays and Mr. Richmond were members of Steubenville High School’s powerhouse Big Red football program. They were charged days after photographs and social media postings involving the episode appeared online.
In one text message, Mr. Mays stated that he had had sexual intercourse with the girl. But in other texts, he denied it, according to the messages read by Ms. Gibb during her testimony.
Mr. Mays also texted that the girl “was like a dead body” and that he did not try to have oral sex with her because “she would have thrown up,” while denying that he drugged the girl and texting that he tried to take her beer away.
At one point, a friend texted to Mr. Mays, “You are a felon.”
