Devontavious Bryant sits with his attorney, Joshua Weiss, left, in Judge Don Poole's courtroom in the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Courts Building as jury selection begins in his trial on Tuesday. Bryant faces charges for his alleged role in the rape of a woman jogger near Finley Stadium in 2012.Defense attorney Joshua Weiss turned toward the jury. On the screen were two photos of a yellow Adidas jacket.
Weiss introduced himself as that jacket.
"I never thought I would end up in a brown paper bag," Weiss said. "I never thought I would end up in a brown paper bag at a rape trial."
The yellow jacket, and the question of who wore it, is at the center of a rape case that's already seen one plea and a 10-year sentence. A trial began Tuesday for 20-year-old Devontavious Bryant, charged with aggravated rape and robbery.
His co-defendant, Deacon Williams, 18, pleaded no contest Friday to rape and guilty to robbery in the 2012 attack on a woman jogger. Williams was sentenced to 10 years in prison without the possibility of parole. If convicted, Bryant faces more than 30 years.
The 30-year-old victim was attacked while she was running near Finley Stadium early in the morning on Oct. 12, 2012.
In opening statements, Assistant District Attorney General Cameron Williams said Bryant and Williams robbed the woman. Bryant, whom the victim identified as wearing a yellow sweatshirt, then choked her unconscious, dragged her to an embankment and gave her two choices: give him oral sex or take off her pants.
"They have robbed her not only of her mp3 player, they have robbed her of any sense of security that she may have," Cameron Williams said. "They have robbed her of any sanctity that she may have."
But during his opening statements, Weiss invited the jury to question which of the two men was wearing the jacket at the time of the attack.
"I wasn't being worn by D[evontavious]," Weiss said, in the jacket's voice. "I was being worn by someone else."
Weiss told the jury that Williams loaned the jacket to Bryant before they went out the night before, but Bryant gave it back to him to wear before the attack.
The jury heard from three witnesses Tuesday.
Prosecutors called Jeffrey Brown, the man who picked up the victim immediately after the attack, to the stand.
"She was crying and kind of shaking, breathing really hard," Brown said. "Terrified, I guess you'd say."
Prosecutors followed with more than an hour of a video taken in the back seat of Chattanooga Police Department Officer Daryl Slaughter's cruiser after he picked up the victim. Judge Don Poole ruled last week the video could be shown in court.
On the video, the woman told Slaughter it seemed to her like a gang initiation.
"It was very half-assed, if you will," she told the officer.
During cross-examination of Slaughter, Weiss asked about the victim's identification of her attackers, and zeroed in on the way she distinguished the two men. Slaughter said she told him the first suspect was not forceful with her.
Rape Crisis Center forensic examiner Amy Griffin also took the stand. The woman told her only one of the teens, one in a dark hoodie, was able to penetrate her. The second teen tried but "couldn't," she said.
Griffin said she found small lacerations consistant with forced penetration on the victim, and fragments of debris on her thighs. Other injuries matched the woman's narrative, Griffin said.
The final witness was a Chattanooga police detective who described his search of Bryant's bedroom. The trial is expected to continue Wednesday morning.
Contact staff writer Claire Wiseman at cwiseman@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6347. Follow her on Twitter @clairelwiseman.