Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday in the 2012 case of a Chicago man accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a home near the Aurora University campus.
Corderro Pollard, 26, has pleaded not guilty to criminal sexual assault and aggravated criminal sexual assault in connection to the August 2012 incident. Prosecutors allege Pollard had sex with a Joliet woman who was too intoxicated to consent after the pair, and others, had spent the night out drinking at various locations.
Attorneys on Thursday told Kane County Judge John Barsanti they were ready to go forward with the trial, which had been rescheduled at least two others times in the nearly five years since Pollard and two co-defendants were charged in the case.
The other men — Eric Stallworth and Shammrie Brown — were also initially charged. Stallworth pleaded guilty to unlawful restraint in 2015 and was sentenced to probation and periodic imprisonment. Prosecutors accused Brown of failing to intervene on the woman’s behalf during the assault, but dropped that case a few months later and instead charged him with misdemeanor battery. That case remains pending with a June 20 hearing scheduled.
Brown is listed in court filings as a potential witness for prosecutors in the Pollard case.
Court records describe Stallworth, Pollard, Brown and the woman as spending the night drinking together in Naperville before heading to Aurora with a plan to go to the casino. The documents don’t specify how long they stayed, but the woman apparently vomited during the group’s time there.
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The woman, a single mother, told police she was unsure how she got to the residence on Kenilworth Avenue where Stallworth and Pollard lived at the time, records show.
Before his guilty plea, Stallworth’s attorney contended the sex was a consensual encounter. He also had sought to have his statements to police suppressed on grounds that police questioned him even after he asked for a lawyer.
Dan Campana is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News