Alabama fan seen in video charged with sexual battery

By Associated Press

For the AJC

NEW ORLEANS  — Lawyers for an Alabama man accused of committing sexual battery on an unconscious LSU fan after the BCS championship football game say it's mind-boggling that police and prosecutors would give substantial energy and attention to the matter.

Charging Brian Downing, 32, of Smiths Station, Ala., with sexual battery "demeans the real and serious trauma of actual victims of sexual violence," New Orleans attorneys Miles Swanson and Michael Kennedy said in a statement Thursday.

Swanson also said the idea that his client could be charged and face up to 10 years in jail if convicted is "also a little troubling."

"It just doesn't fit," Swanson said late Thursday of the situation.

Downing surrendered to New Orleans police and was charged with sexual battery and obscenity after a video went viral on the Internet, showing him exposing himself and simulating a sex act on the head of an unconscious man in an LSU-purple T-shirt. The incident occurred at a Krystal restaurant on Bourbon Street late Jan. 9, after Alabama defeated the Tigers for the national title.

"The eighteen-year-old victim was never physically harmed and, in fact, was so intoxicated that he would have had no recollection of the incident, but for a video posted online," the lawyers wrote. "Any ‘harm' is entirely post hoc and amplified by media."

Downing, who is free on $10,000 bond, "has already been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. He has been fired from his job and suffers continual harassment by the public and media," the attorneys wrote.

The Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office has not brought charges in the case.

"As the District Attorney's office screens this matter, we hope that it will keep its priorities in line with addressing real crime in New Orleans," the attorneys said.