Ex-Cowboy Joseph Randle’s sex assault trial on pause after incompetency ruling
Ex-Dallas Cowboys running back Joseph Randle won’t stand trial for now on charges alleging he sexually assaulted a woman at her Wichita apartment in 2018.
A judge ruled Friday morning that Randle, 31, isn’t currently mentally competent enough to move forward with the case at this time, putting another pause on his prosecution.
District Judge Tyler Roush “ordered him be sent to an NFL (National Football League) inpatient mental health treatment program in Houston,” Dan Dillon, a spokesman for the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office, said in an email Friday.
“As soon as an inpatient bed becomes available at Larned State Hospital, he (Randle) will be admitted into that facility for mental health care and treatment,” Dillon said.
Randle, a Wichita native, was deemed competent in a similar proceeding earlier this year, but judges can make new rulings when a defendant’s mental status and understanding changes as a case progresses through court. He has had a number of mental health exams in the last several years amid mounting legal problems, most in Wichita, following his 2015 release from the Cowboys organization after less than a season.
In the latest case, Randle is accused of raping and otherwise sexually assaulting a woman for around three hours at her Wichita apartment on Sept. 6, 2018. The woman testified at a 2019 hearing that Randle was initially there on her invitation but later refused to leave. She eventually escaped the attack by running half naked out of her home and knocking on neighbors’ doors for help.
Randle refuted the woman’s characterization of that night at the hearing, telling a judge that she “never said no.”
He pleaded not guilty in 2019.
Other crimes Randle has committed in Wichita include hitting partygoers with a car during a fit of anger in February 2016, dodging law enforcement attempts to serve him with a warrant, threatening a jail deputy who denied him phone privileges, damaging a television at the jail and brawling with another inmate, The Eagle previously reported.
This story was originally published November 3, 2023 at 12:27 PM.
