Current Houston Texans and former Michigan State receiver Keith Mumphery is banned from his alma mater’s campus until 2019 as the result of a university investigation into a report of sexual assault, the Detroit Free Press reported today. The ban was a stipulation of Mumphery’s 2016 expulsion from Michigan State for violating the school’s relationship violence and sexual misconduct policy, according to the report.
Mumphery’s case marks the third case to become public in the past two years related to sexual assault involving a member of the Michigan State football program. Three players were suspended and staff member Curtis Blackwell was let go while a rape investigation involving three football players is ongoing. Independent from that, defensive lineman Auston Roberts is facing third-degree criminal sexual conduct charges; he was dismissed from the program in April.
Mumphery attended Michigan State on a football scholarship and worked his way into the starting lineup early in his career, leading the team in receptions as a sophomore in 2012. After redshirting in 2010, Mumphery graduated in May 2014 with a degree in communications and opted to remain in East Lansing to use his final season of eligibility and work on his master’s in the same field; following the 2014 football season, Mumphery focused his attention on the upcoming 2015 NFL draft.
It was during this time period—after the college football season and the NFL combine and one day before his pro day—that the Free Press said a female Michigan State student reported to campus police that Mumphery sexually assaulted her in her dorm room. The newspaper summarized the documents as saying police talked to the woman and Mumphery, with the reports offering “conflicting accounts of who was the aggressor and whether elements of their sexual behavior were consensual.” The woman’s report was filed March 17, 2015; university police passed the case to the Ingham County Prosecutor’s Office later that month, requesting third-degree criminal sexual conduct charges against Mumphery.
Those charges never came. The Free Press reported that police documents said assistant county prosecutor Steve Kwasnik decided to not bring charges several months later, on Aug. 24, 2015, because the case “could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt and the accuser did not return contact.” The university police investigation was officially closed on June 23, 2016.
That left the sexual assault case solely in the hands of Michigan State’s internal Title IX process—which has a lower burden of proof, akin to a civil lawsuit, and at Michigan State is judged by a three-person panel. The exact decision made by the panel isn’t given in the Free Press report, but it says that the vice president of student affairs emailed Mumphery on June 7, 2016, to notify him of his violation the university’s policy on relationship violence and sexual misconduct. As a result, Mumphery can no longer enroll in any courses at Michigan State, nixing his plans to reenroll in his graduate program, and he is banned from campus for the next year and a half.
The Free Press reached out Mumphery’s agent, who declined to comment. His current team, the Texans, said they were “gathering information.”