Cory Batey tells Vanderbilt victim that he's sorry

Cory Batey was horrified by the photographs he found on his cellphone after waking up on June 23, 2013.

"I didn't know how they got there," the former Vanderbilt University football player said Monday. "I didn't know what had happened to the young lady in the pictures, and I immediately deleted them."

Batey did not try to check on the woman, whom he did not know. He went to church. And then he talked to his friends.

"They explained to me that I was kind of wild that night," Batey said in court testimony on Monday. He testified for about two hours in his own defense.

Batey, who turns 21 on Tuesday, and another former Vanderbilt University football player, Brandon Vandenburg, are on trial on charges of raping the 21-year-old unconscious woman whom Batey found partially nude in pictures on his phone.

Vandenburg, 21, and Batey face five charges of aggravated rape and two charges of aggravated sexual battery. Two other former Vanderbilt football players, Jaborian "Tip" McKenzie and Brandon E. Banks, both 20, are also accused. They are awaiting trial.

Batey carried a copy of "The Bible Promise Book," a collection of Bible verses, with him Monday. He appeared nervous at times, often wetting his lips and clearing his throat. Once, when talking about his former best friends Banks and McKenzie, his voice cracked and he hung his head and covered his eyes.

Batey said he did not remember anything after party hopping between dorms the night before the alleged rape. Surveillance video shows him — wearing sagging jeans and dreadlocks — going into the room where the alleged rape took place.

In that room, according to prior court testimony, Batey sexually assaulted the woman, slapped her to make sure she would not wake up and took pictures.

In court Monday, Batey wore a gray suit and purple tie, his hair cut short. His mother, who has worked at a Vanderbilt clinic for more than three decades, cousins and uncles filled two rows in the courtroom.

Other seats were filled by attorneys, including District Attorney Glenn Funk, and members of the public who came by to see the high-profile trial. Attorneys got about halfway through closing arguments Monday.

When his attorney, Worrick Robinson, asked questions, Batey's answers were thought out and elaborate. After each question, Batey turned toward the jury to deliver his answer.

He told jurors about how things fell apart after he found the pictures.

There were rumors on campus, he said. Batey said Banks fed him a "storyline" to tell officials: That nothing happened.

Batey said he sensed he was in trouble. He said the first time he saw graphic videos that are the crux of the state's case, which detectives later recovered from his cellphone and his friends' phones, was when the videos were shared with his attorneys.

Batey occasionally averted his eyes as Robinson played a couple of the videos in court Monday.

As they played, the victim — who has watched each day of trial from courtroom — appeared to vomit into a cup. One juror looked her way.

During his testimony, Batey apologized to the woman.

"I was just drunk out of my mind," he said. "This is something I would never do in my right state of mind. I'm just sorry."

In one of his last questions, Robinson asked Batey if he was taking responsibility for his actions.

"After seeing the footage, I do," he said. "It was me."

Jim Todd, an attorney who is analyzing the case for The Tennessean, said Batey's testimony was essential to combat the photo and video evidence.

"I think that it's always harder to convict a person as opposed to a name, and before (Monday) morning he was a name" to the jury, Todd said. "If anything he made himself a person and it was good for the jury to hear him and hear him apologize."

Prior testimony has shown Batey exchanged text messages with fellow football players in the days after the alleged rape, making sure the victim did not remember anything and ensuring photo or video evidence had been deleted.

Batey's demeanor changed when Assistant District Attorney Roger Moore stepped up to the podium. His answers were curtailed, and he often asked Moore to repeat questions. The long-winded answers he often gave his own attorney turned into a series of things he could not remember.

Batey said he could not recall how he got to church the day after the alleged rape. He could not recall the room number where he and other football players planned a cover-up. He could not recall what room his "big brother," a mentor on the football team, lived in. He could not recall who, if anyone, he woke up with after the alleged rape. He could not recall what he sent to his girlfriend in 189 messages about the incident.

"So Mr. Batey, today you say you accept full responsibility for your actions. Does that mean you're changing your plea from not guilty to guilty?" Moore lobbed his first question.

Robinson objected and Moore continued.

"Is that what you're doing?"

Batey looked to his attorneys.

"Don't look over there. I'm asking you a question," Moore asked.

"No, sir."

Reach Stacey Barchenger at 615-726-8968 and on Twitter @sbarchenger.

Closing arguments

It's almost as if she is not alive.

That's how Assistant District Attorney Jan Norman, in her closing argument of trial on Monday, described a 21-year-old unconscious woman who was allegedly raped in a Vanderbilt University dorm in June 2013. Brandon Vandenburg carried the woman into Room 213 of Gillette Hall, and within two minutes Cory Batey was attacking the woman, Norman told a jury.

"She is on that floor," Norman said. "Her arms are all twisted under her, and Mr. Batey is penetrating her with his finger within two minutes. And what do we hear? Laughing. Mr. Vandenburg laughing."

Norman delivered a 36-minute closing argument for the state on Monday, the 11th day of trial. Worrick Robinson, the attorney for Cory Batey, followed up with a 75-minute argument. The day moved slower than expected, and attorneys for Vandenburg, who is on trial with Batey, will deliver arguments Tuesday morning.

Norman told jurors to rely on video and photo evidence.

"This is normally the part of the trial where we might say that if we have this on photo, or if we have this on video, then it would make the state's job easier," Norman said. "But we actually have this uncontradicted proof in this case."

Robinson emphasized in his closing argument that peer pressure and a campus culture of promiscuity and partying were to blame.

Robinson said it was like driving on the freeway, where the speed limit is 55 mph but drivers speed 60-65 mph to go with the flow of traffic. He mentioned several people who saw the woman partially clothed or being carried into the dorm, but who took no action.

"It's part of the culture," he said. "It's part of the culture that makes it OK to drink and consume alcohol to the point where you pass out or can't remember anything. And I'm not calling out Vanderbilt, because it happens everywhere."

What's next

The trial resumes at 8:45 a.m. Tuesday. Attorneys for Brandon Vandenburg will deliver a closing argument and prosecutors will get a chance to respond. Then Judge Monte Watkins will read jury instructions, two jurors will be dismissed as alternates and the remaining 12 people are expected to begin deliberating the case.