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Florida State's Jameis Winston is a redshirt freshman quarterback who led his team to the BCS National Championship this year. He has also been accused of rape. A New York Times investigation published today shows that FSU and the police conducted "virtually no investigation" into an incident that occurred in December 2012, long before Winston won the Heisman Trophy.

If this sounds to you like a star athlete getting special treatment by the authorities and his university, it is. Winston's accuser reported being raped by a student she didn't know on December 7, 2012. She was confused, bruised, and had blacked out during the incident — in the 911 call, her friend said she thought she got hit in the back of the head. Police collected DNA found in the the accuser's underwear, and then did nothing for almost two months. The timeline Walt Bogdanich at the Times reports (at right) is alarming — once the accuser identified Winston as her rapist, police didn't interview him for two weeks. Within a year, prosecutor William Meggs closed the case because there was not enough evidence. According to the Times, that's because the police department made little effort to collect any.

When reports of the alleged rape hit the news in December 2013, Winston was nearly done with his record-breaking season. FSU officials didn't question him about the incident until January 2014 — after the season was over and the investigation was closed. Winston's lawyer maintains that Winston is innocent, and that he had consensual sex with his accuser. Winston faces no punishment from FSU.