Eagles lineman Josh Sills acquitted of rape, kidnapping charges

Eagles offensive lineman Josh Sills was acquitted Friday of raping and kidnapping a young woman and former high school classmate in his Ohio hometown.

A jury delivered the verdict after about three hours of deliberations following four days of testimony. Sills, 25, was found not guilty of forcibly restraining the woman in his pickup truck and forcing her to perform oral sex after he drove her home in December 2019.

As the jury foreperson read aloud the verdict in the Guernsey County courtroom, Sills did not react, looking stoically ahead. Afterward, Judge Daniel G. Padden gave him an unusual chance to address the panel.

“I’d like to thank you for everything you’ve done,” Sills said. “I’d like to thank my family for supporting me from day one. I’ve done nothing wrong, and am glad that was proven today.”

The acquittal, his lawyer, Michael Connick, added, “ends a nearly four-year nightmare for the Sills family, and particularly Josh.”

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said in a statement that he respected but did not agree with the jury’s verdict.

“I still believe the victim,” he said. “But in America, criminal convictions require proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The jury did not see it, and I thank them for doing their duty under the law.”

Sills, a 6-foot-6, 325-pound standout who played at West Virginia University and Oklahoma State University, was signed by the Eagles last year as an undrafted free agent, playing in one game last season against the Arizona Cardinals.

Although the woman — who, like Sills, was 21 at the time — filed a police report immediately after she said Sills assaulted her in 2019, the investigation against the football player took nearly three years to complete, and a grand jury did not deliver an indictment until late January of this year. The Ohio Attorney General’s Office announced the felony rape and kidnapping charges against Sills the next day — immediately after the Eagles captured the NFC championship and earned a spot in the Super Bowl.

» READ MORE: An Eagles offensive lineman is on trial for rape. Here’s what you should know.

A day after the charges were filed, the NFL placed Sills, who pleaded not guilty, on the “Commissioner Exempt List,” barring him from practices, games, or travel with the team until further notice.

Following the verdict Friday, the Eagles said in a statement that the NFL had removed Sills from the exempt list, and that he will return to the team’s active roster.

Throughout the trial, Sills’ attorneys raised questions around the timing of the indictment, calling the charges “retaliatory” and accusing prosecutors of targeting Sills because of his athletic success.

The lead investigator in the case testified that the probe took years to complete due to hurdles including COVID-related jury restrictions, a new prosecutor, and the fact that the state Attorney General’s Office had to take over the case because a high-ranking local law enforcement official was related to Sills’ accuser.

During the weeklong trial, jurors heard from investigators, medical and forensic experts, the woman, and her friends, who shared emotional testimony about how she confided in them in the immediate aftermath of the alleged assault. Sills did not testify.

“She said Josh raped her,” Brooke Bing, a friend of the woman, said about the early morning encounter. “She showed me marks on her legs, and the tearing of her skin.”

The woman reported the alleged rape the following morning to the Guernsey County Sheriff’s Office, which conducted a lengthy investigation.

» READ MORE: Where to find sexual assault support and counseling resources in the Philadelphia region

The woman said she had known Sills for about eight years and attended high school with the football player in their hometown of Sarahsville, Ohio, a rural village in the Ohio Valley with a population of 147. She told investigators that early one morning in December 2019, Sills drove her and her cousin home after a night of bar-hopping and exchanging Snapchat messages. She told her cousin she’d be inside in a minute, and the cousin went inside and went to bed.

In the truck, the woman testified that she and Sills started kissing. But when he tried to take off her clothes, she said, she told him to stop.

At one point, Bing pulled up in the driveway. The woman’s cousin told jurors she saw Sills’ truck parked there, but assumed he was inside the house.

All the while, prosecutors said, Sills was holding the woman down, pushing her into the seat by her neck, so no one could see them. The woman said Sills then forced her to perform oral sex.

In the years following the incident, Assistant Attorney General William Walton told the jury, the woman began powerlifting, “getting as big and strong as she can, so no one does this again to her.”

Sills’ lawyers cast doubt on the woman’s assertion that he forcefully held her down, suggesting in closing arguments that she did not want to be seen in the truck with Sills.

Defense attorneys referenced a piece of paper with a traced outline of the lineman’s hand, asking the jury to question whether it was “reasonable” that the woman did not have more pronounced marks around her neck from the scuffle.

“He’s a guy that’s paid to fight and to struggle, he’s an offensive lineman for the Philadelphia Eagles, the team that lost the Super Bowl,” attorney Steven Dever told jurors.

Sills’ lawyers also scrutinized the extensive investigation and inconsistencies in witness recollection, but prosecutors noted the events happened three years ago and said it was unsurprising that details from the alcohol-infused night were hazy.

“These were young kids who were out drinking at bars,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Spitzer.

As Sills left the courthouse Friday, flanked by his family, Dever said his client planned to immediately board a plane to return to Philadelphia.

Sills, he said, will “be back with the Philadelphia Eagles and be able to move on with his life and his family.”

“Hopefully,” the lawyer said, “he’ll take this experience of what has happened here, and grow as a person, and be successful in all the things that he chooses to do and represent the folks of Guernsey County.”