No felony conviction in ex-athlete’s sexual assault trial

WILMINGTON, Del. – The second trial of a former University of Delaware baseball player accused of sexually assaulting six women has ended with a jury convicting him of misdemeanour unlawful sexual contact.

A jury on Friday declined to convict Clay Conaway on felony charges of attempted second-degree rape and strangulation. Instead, they returned a guilty verdict for third-degree unlawful sexual contact. That offence carries no mandatory prison time and a presumptive sentence of probation.

Conaway had been charged with assaulting a woman in November 2017 after connecting with her through the dating app Tinder. Court records indicate that both were students at the University of Delaware at the time and that the incident occurred in Conway’s bedroom.

Following a trial last year on a charge of first-degree rape involving another woman, Conaway was sentenced in November to five years in prison after being found guilty on the lesser charge of fourth-degree rape.

That trial involved a woman who said Conaway raped her after she drove to his family’s house in Georgetown, Delaware. The encounter happened three weeks after they connected on the social and dating app Bumble and Conaway sent her a nude picture of himself.