Penn State coach James Franklin introduces assistant coaches

File: Penn State coach James Franklin introduces assistant coaches during a news conference at Beaver Stadium. Joe Hermitt, PennLive

(Joe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.com/2014)

A Nashville prosecutor reiterated Wednesday that he has no reason to believe Penn State head football coach James Franklin was involved in any attempt to cover up a June 2013 rape case at his old school, Vanderbilt University.

There, four players recruited by Franklin are facing criminal charges stemming from the alleged sexual assault of a Vanderbilt coed.

Last September, Davidson County Deputy District Attorney Tom Thurman, the lead prosecutor in the case, went public with declarations that Franklin was not suspected of any wrongdoing in the case.

He repeated it in January, when Franklin was hired away by Penn State.

And now this:

Despite revelations in a recent defense motion that Franklin texted the alleged assault victim on June 27, just four days after the incident, Thurman said the coach’s overall posture in the case has not changed.

“There’s no indication that Coach Franklin had any improper involvement in this case,” Thurman said in a brief telephone interview with PennLive Wednesday.

Thurman declined to discuss any specifics about evidence gathered in the course of the investigation, including any details about the coach-to-victim contact disclosed in a motion or dismissal filed on behalf of defendant Brandon Vandenburg this week.

But, he did volunteer “there was nothing inappropriate about it, as far as I know.”

Franklin’s outreach to the victim was disclosed in a filing by Vandenburg’s lawyers, who are asking courts to dismiss the charges because of the prosecution’s failure to preserve or turn over material evidence to the defense.

The court filings, initially reported Tuesday on the Web site of Nashville's Tennessean, can be seen here.

The defense complains in the filing that their ability to defend their client is compromised by, among other things:

• The destruction of pictures and text messages pertaining to the incident by the victim and at least one other person (not Franklin);

• Selective sharing of the victim’s medical records and surveillance videos from campus security cameras;

• The reduction of more than 28,000 texts and calls logged on the victim’s iPhone to 47 that were eventually shared with the defense.

Vandenburg’s attorneys, in a separate interview with PennLive, offered no opinion on Franklin’s role in the case, complaining that they’ve been forced to operate in a factual desert on that point.

They haven’t been granted access to Franklin’s telephone records or text messages, or any reports from what attorney Eugene Osko described as a police visit to Franklin’s home in the days after the alleged attack.

Coach Franklin, they said, declined a request to be interviewed.

“We have been seeking any police records or any documentation that would show an investigation was conducted of Mr. Franklin,” said Osko, who may want to call the Penn State coach as a witness, “and we have been given zero.”

Thurman, for his part, said the defense in some cases is asking for records that simply weren’t obtained in the course of the probe. Franklin’s telephone records, he said, may be an example of that.

Much is left unknown, in part because of protective orders proscribing all sides from disclosing certain facts about the case.

In some quarters, Franklin has been praised for dealing swiftly and decisively with all of the the accused players at Vanderbilt once credible allegations emerged.

For now, Penn State fans will just have to hold onto this: the man leading the Vanderbilt prosecution says the rape case has been “thoroughly investigated,” and at this point – just like in September and again in January - the coach is not a suspect.