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Prosecutors: Naval Academy midshipman was too drunk to consent

The Baltimore Sun reports:

The court-martial of a Naval Academy midshipmen accused of sexually assaulting a classmate got under way Tuesday morning with prosecutors telling a judge they plan to prove that the woman was so drunk that she could not have consented to having sex.

Midshipman Joshua Tate, a senior from Nashville, Tenn., is charged with aggravated sexual assault and making false statements to investigators. He’s the only one on trial of three midshipmen who were initially accused of assaulting the woman at an off-campus party in April 2012.

The woman, said prosecutor Lt. Col. Ryan Stormer, took “shot after shot after shot” and “swig and swig and swig” from a bottle of rum “until she got so intoxicated that past a certain point she blacked out and lost her memory.”

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