An Atlanta businessman and former chairman of the city’s tourism bureau has been acquitted of rape charges in Massachusetts.
J. Michael Robison, founder of Lanier Parking Solutions, was indicted on two counts of rape in November, three months after Nantucket, Mass., police arrested him in connection with a family friend's alleged sexual assault.
On Tuesday, a jury acquitted him after two hours and 40 minutes of deliberations, Robison’s attorney said.
“Michael Robison was innocent from the beginning,” the attorney, Jim Lawson, said in a statement. “He demanded a trial to clear his name. The jury quickly reached its decision to acquit him of all charges.”
A spokeswoman for the Cape and Islands District Attorney’s Office confirmed the acquittal.
In a statement emailed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Richard Griggs, the attorney for Robison’s accuser, called the verdict disappointing.
“Our client is, of course, disappointed in the Nantucket criminal case verdict,” Griggs said in the statement, “but she was well aware going in that convictions are very difficult to obtain in non-stranger or acquaintance rape cases based upon national averages and also considering the extremely high ‘beyond a reasonable doubt standard.’ As it has been from the beginning, her most important objective was to see the criminal process through, regardless of the outcome, and she did that.”
Robison, 50, founded Lanier Parking in 1989 as a Georgia Tech student and built the firm into a national and international parking management giant. The company manages lots and decks at high-profile office towers, shopping malls and arenas, and also managed parking during the 2002 and 2010 Winter Olympic Games and several PGA championship golf tournaments.
Robison, who previously led the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau, has maintained that the encounter with his accuser, who attorneys called a “longtime family friend,” was consensual.
In December, Robison's accuser filed a civil suit against him in Fulton County. Griggs said Tuesday that he hoped the conclusion of the criminal case would allow the discovery phase of the civil case to begin.
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