NBA star has happy snaps with jurors after being cleared of rape

The Derrick Rose rape trial has ended in controversial fashion after the NBA star was spotted posing for photographs with jurors after being found not guilty of the charges against him.

A Los Angeles jury has ruled that New York Knicks point guard and his two friends should not be held liable on any charges in a high-stakes, hotly contested civil trial.

The three men were accused of drugging Rose’s ex-girlfriend, breaking into her apartment and gang-raping her while she was unconscious in August of 2013.

The plaintiff in the case — a 30-year-old woman identified in court documents as “Jane Doe,” who had a non-exclusive sexual relationship with Rose from late 2011 through July 2013 — had alleged that Rose and two friends, Ryan Allen and Randall Hampton, placed a drug in her drink during a party at Rose’s Beverly Hills rental home.

She claimed to have taken a cab home, that she needed the cab’s driver to walk her to her front door, that she remembered throwing up and passing out in her bedroom with her clothes on, and not much else about the early hours of Aug. 27, 2013 — besides Rose, Hampton and Allen being in her apartment, Rose having sex with her, and then Hampton and Allen later having sex with her while Rose watched.

Attorneys for Rose, Allen and Hampton had acknowledged that their clients had sex with Doe on the night in question, but called the sex consensual. The defendants testified that the accuser had urged them to go to her house after the party, that she’d let them into her apartment herself, and that they took turns having consensual sex with the woman in her room.

Their attorneys claimed that the accuser was trying to “shake down a highly respected and successful athlete.”

The jury reached its verdict after three hours and 45 minutes of deliberation on Wednesday, one day after hearing closing arguments in the case, which stretched for nearly two weeks.

The six-woman, two-man panel had been charged with considering the separate allegations — trespassing, sexual battery, battery, conspiracy, gender violence and emotional distress — and reaching separate unanimous verdicts as to whether Rose, Allen and Hampton should be found liable on any of the claims.

They cleared all three men on all counts.

It is not clear if these are the same two jurors who chose to take a cheerful photo with Rose after the verdict was read:

Or these two:

The plaintiff had been suing Rose for $21.5 million in damages. The “not liable” verdict means Rose doesn’t have to pay any money out to his accuser.

Doe’s attorneys said after the verdict that they’re “contemplating an appeal.” There are also several post-verdict motions they could file before that, as laid out by Daniel Werly of The White Bronco, though he cautions that such motions are “rarely granted.”