Nebraska Football: Mickey Joseph assault charges dismissed
Former Nebraska football head coach Mickey Joseph had domestic assault charges against him dismissed in large part due to a material witness not cooperating.
Mickey Joseph was charged with assault by strangulation or suffocation over the winter and not long after Matt Rhule was named the Nebraska football head coach. However, in a court hearing on Wednesday morning, the Lancaster County Attorney dropped those charges in what was the culmination of a months long process of trying to get the former Husker head coach’s material witness to cooperate with the prosecution.
According to the Omaha World Herald, Pat Condon filed a motion for a court order that would force the ex-coach’s accuser — identified as a material witness in the case — to attend a preliminary hearing. The filing suggested that she no longer was cooperating in the case against Joseph.
Earlier this week, Condon’s team filed an affadavit that laid out all the ways they have attempted to contact this material witness in order to compel her to come to the hearing. That included knocking at her door and seeing “someone” inside but no one answered. In all the prosecution made seven trips in a four day period to the home in order to try and contact the witness.
The case was dismissed in large part because the witness had since indicated that she would not testify against the former Nebraska football coach.
Former Nebraska football coach sees case dismissed
The dismissal marks the end of a saga that began on November 30 when Mickey Joseph was arrested on November 30 for the assault in which he was accused of grabbing the alleged victim’s hair, pulling her to the ground, punching her in the back of the head and eventually attempting to strangle her.
While there were was a strong push from Nebraska football fans for Matt Rhule to keep Mickey Joseph on staff after the former Carolina Panthers head coach arrived in Lincoln, the arrest made that all but impossible. On December 6 – about a week after the arrest – the university officially parted ways with Joseph.