Late this afternoon, Mike Ribeiro was acquitted in court in Mount Vernon, Texas, of two of the three sexual assault charges against him.
The Franklin County jury appeared before dinner before Judge Eddie Northcutt in this rural area two hours east of Dallas.
After agreeing on these two counts, the jury sought instructions from the judge on the third count, attempted sexual assault of a third alleged victim, which occurred on June 23, 2021, at Lake Cypress in Mount Vernon.
Judge Northcutt remanded them for deliberation until they reached a verdict. But they never got along.
The jury was dissolved. According to our colleagues at local ABC-owned television station KLTV, prosecutors announced they would refile the attempted sexual assault charge in March. Both the defense and the prosecution declined to comment after the verdict.
According to KLTV, the former Canadian forward, who then played for the Dallas Stars from 2006 to 2011, spent the day at the courthouse.
He appeared calm as he waited for the verdict. The deliberations had lasted more than twelve hours until the judge announced part of the decision at around 5:30 p.m. local time.
The 43-year-old Ribeiro faced a maximum sentence of 20 years.
The process
Recall that one of the three women in this case said she was attacked while sitting next to Ribeiro in the driver's seat of a boat.
For their part, the other two women said they suffered an attack or inappropriate gestures while traveling with him on a personal watercraft.
The three women testified during the trial that they went to Ribeiro's house because two of the victims wanted to buy it. There were about ten people there.
Two of them had met the ex-NHL player, who played almost 1,100 games in 17 seasons, in a restaurant the day before.
They had been exchanging phone numbers with Ribeiro when he mentioned he was in the area to sell his lake house.
They agreed to meet at his house the next day.
The Quebecer, who was accompanied for seven days by a relative, a woman, is a resident of California.
In trouble
Earlier in the day, while the jury was deliberating, the Journal consulted defense lawyers' expertise on the Ribeiro clan's legal strategy.
Me Jean-Pierre Rancourt, a specialist in American law, believed that Ribeiro was “in trouble” given the known facts and testimony. In his opinion, the ex-hockey player, who was also affected by a story from 2012, should have presented his version of the facts to prevent the jury from questioning his silence.