The victim, then a 21-year-old neuroscience student, and Vandenburg, who is from California, had begun dating shortly after he arrived on campus as a 20-year-old in early June. On June 22, the two met up in a popular bar for Vanderbilt students. "I knew they'd been hanging out for a little bit so we trusted him," the victim's roommate, Lauren Miller, testified. The woman said she remembered nothing for a period of hours after Vandenburg gave her a blue drink at the bar. She woke up in pain the next morning in his dorm bed and said she believed what Vandenburg had told her, that she had vomited and he had taken care of her, going to his dorm when he could not get into her apartment. Security video shows the other players helping him carry her into the dorm.
Prosecutors depicted Vandenburg as a man who "served her up to three strangers," as Norman told jurors in her closing remarks. Vandenburg, prosecutors said, passed out condoms to the other players, took video of the rape and sent it to friends as it was happening. They suggested that she had been given a date-rape drug and argued that, although he did not penetrate the victim, he should be considered criminally responsible and convicted of aggravated rape. Vandenburg's attorneys argued that he was intoxicated and could not be responsible for what players he did not know did. They depicted him as a naive young man who was new to campus.
Graphic video and photos from the players' cell phones were shown during the trial and Albert Perez, an attorney for Vandenburg, admitted in closing remarks that "the videos are disturbing. They make you mad, they make you sad." However, he argued that the acts were committed by others, not Vandenburg.
