CHARLOTTE, Mich. — Former MSU president Lou Anna Simon was back in Eaton County today for the seventh and last day of her preliminary hearing, but it looks like we'll have to wait until October for a decision on whether Simon will head to trial.
Simon is accused of lying to investigators during their investigation into the Larry Nassar case and MSU's handling of the sexual assault complaints.
"MSU cleared a monster and they put him back in the position to assault dozens more victims before the truth came out in the newspaper," Michigan's Office of Attorney General Scott Teter said.
The prosecution pinpointed the testimony from Simon's former senior adviser Paulette Granberry Russell. Prosecutors showed an email from Russell to Simon after the first complaint was made against Larry Nassar.
"'We have an incident involving a sports medicine doc', so in less than 24 hours from Amanda's interview with Christine Moore, the defendant is notified about the incident," Teter said.
Prosecutors showed a picture of Russell's folder containing documents to discuss with the president in a meeting.
"She wrote on the outside of that folder in preparation for the meeting with the defendant, in her own handwriting 'sports med, Dr. Nassar SA' and she said that meant sexual assault," Teter said.
They also talked about Simon's own meeting agenda with her own handwriting on the document.
"The defendant's agenda had her handwriting on it from that conference, under the item for sexual assault, she wrote COM [College of Osteopathic Medicine] -- if the defendant didn't know the substance of that review or the nature of the complaint which is what she told detectives, then why did she write it under the section for sexual assault cases?" Teter said.
The defense's argument is that Simon didn't deliberately mislead investigators.
"Why do we automatically assume that even if Lou Anna Simon gave false information, it was a deliberate knowing lie as opposed to just being due to a lack of memory about something that was mentioned to her, if at all, four years ago," Defense attorney Lee Silver said.
They say many other witnesses had trouble with recalling information and Simon shouldn't be punished for a lack of memory.
"If the evidence proves anything in this case, it proves that nobody has a very good memory of conversations of Larry Nassar and this investigation," Silver said.
However, the prosecutors believe there is sufficient evidence to send Simon to trial.
"She never told anyone about getting an email, about having a conference, about notes on her own agenda, none of that, because it allowed her to absolve herself and MSU from the responsibility of what she knew and when she knew it and that was May 19 of 2014," Teter said.
The next step is for the Attorney General's office to file a brief and the defense will have a chance to respond to that before the AG's office responds back.
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