Eric Frimpong left his native Ghana in 2005 to play soccer for UC Santa Barbara; a year later he became a campus hero while leading the Gauchos to their first-ever national championship. But in 2007, just weeks after being selected by the Kansas City Wizards in the MLS draft, he was accused of raping another student on the beach near his house. Now he's a convicted felon.
The victim, using the alias Jane Doe in the case, said Frimpong, who is black, did it, and an all-white jury agreed. But the nature of the case, and some of the more slippery details surrounding it, has divided the community, raising questions about the reliability of the victim's memory, the true character of the accused, the motives and tactics of law enforcement, even the fairness of the justice system. The jury that convicted Frimpong overlooked the starkest facts of the trial: that his accuser was a woman with little memory of what happened that night because of a near-toxic blood alcohol level; that Frimpong's DNA wasn't found on the victim; that semen found on her underwear belonged to a jealous boyfriend, a white student who was never a suspect. The case has drawn parallels with the Duke lacrosse case, except with one big twist: the defendants in the Duke case were white men from affluent families with the means to navigate America's justice system, unlike Frimpong, whom ESPN Magazine describes as a poor immigrant.
The Monahan family, who have embraced Frimpong like a son since he came to Santa Barbara, stand at the heart of a support campaign for Frimpong that has grown with publicity of the case. At Frimpong's sentencing, Loni Monohan, mother of Frimpong's teammate Pat, distributed copies of a printed statement: "We will continue to fight for Eric. We will not rest until he is exonerated and the ugly truth of his wrongful prosecution and conviction comes out." When the leaflets are gone, she leans against a wall, tears flowing. "Eric believed in our system," she says. "He believed justice would prevail." Then she straightens. "Before I was sad," she says. "Now I'm mad."