Former Haskell student pleads to aggravated battery, not rape

One of the two former Haskell Indian Nations University students accused of raping a woman in a campus dorm has pleaded no contest to a lesser charge.

Jared Wheeler entered the plea to aggravated battery and now faces a maximum sentence of less than three years in prison. Wheeler was originally charged with two counts of rape and one count of aggravated criminal sodomy.

He and another former Haskell student, Galen Satoe, were accused of raping a 19-year-old freshman during the fall semester two years ago.

The woman says that when she was raped, both the male students, who were Haskell football players, had been drinking. She was later expelled from the university after getting into a physical altercation with another Haskell student.

The woman, referred to as Jane Doe H. in court documents, in October filed a lawsuit against the university, its president, the United States and the U.S. secretary of interior.

She claims in the suit that Haskell violated its own policies and wrongly expelled her without due process after she was traumatized by the alleged rape on the Lawrence campus.

As for the two men accused in the incident, initial trials ended with mistrials because in both cases the jury could not agree on a verdict.

Satoe, who is charged with two counts of rape and a count of aiding and abetting an attempted rape, is scheduled to begin a second trial in February.

This story was originally published December 1, 2016 at 3:24 PM with the headline "Former Haskell student pleads to aggravated battery, not rape."