A former Indiana University student accused of two rapes was sentenced Thursday to one day in jail and one year of probation as a result of a plea deal with Monroe County prosecutors.
According to People magazine, prosecutors said in a statement that "evidentiary problems" plagued the cases involving John Enochs, one from 2013 and another from last year. The 2013 case was dropped. Enochs pleaded guilty in the 2015 case, and the judge reduced the charge from a felony to misdemeanor battery with moderate bodily injury.
"Neither case, standing alone, presented sufficient evidence to prove rape," reads a statement from the Monroe County prosecutor's office.
Enochs' one day jail sentence was served previously.
WISH-TV reported that both alleged rapes happened at the Delta Tau Delta fraternity house in Bloomington, Indiana. In the 2015 case, the reported victim told police she went into the bathroom after drinking with friends at the fraternity house.
She added, according to police, the next thing she remembered that she was naked in a private room having sex with someone she did not know.
Enochs was charged last September with two counts of rape after an investigation led detectives to another alleged rape case from 2013,
noted WXIN-TV.
Court documents stated that in the 2015 case the victim told police that she repeatedly told her attacker to stop but he continued to hold her down. Authorities secured the security video from the fraternity house, which showed Enochs entering the room with the woman and her leaving 24 minutes later.
Health officials discovered a laceration on the woman's genitals and authorities also collected DNA evidence and witness statements in the case.
"This case presented a very unusual set of circumstances in that we had two unrelated accusations two years apart," the prosecutor's office told People magazine. "That was an important consideration in our initial decision to charge."
"However, under the law, a jury considering one case would not be allowed to know about the other."
Robert Miller, Monroe County's chief deputy prosecuting attorney, told People his office reached out to the alleged victim in the 2015 case before the plea deal but she "never returned our calls." He said in the 2013 case, "We exchanged messages but it didn't work out and we were up against a deadline."
"This turn of events was frustrating for us as prosecutors, due to the fact that there were two complaints against the defendant," the prosecutor's office said in a statement. "That fact is the reason we continued to pursue accountability on his part which lead to this plea agreement."
The Enochs case has been compared to the Brock Turner case in California, who earlier this month was sentenced to six months in the Santa Clara County Jail and three years of probation after pleading guilty to multiple felony counts, in what many charged was too lenient.
According to The Los Angeles Times, the counts against the former Stanford University swimmer included assault with the intent to commit rape of an unconscious person, sexual penetration of an unconscious person and sexual penetration of an intoxicated person. He could have received up to 14 years in prison for the crimes.