An attorney for Jahmal Edrine, doing her job, doing it well, filed a motion in court ahead of a Monday hearing that casts an entirely different light on the rape and abduction charges filed against the UVA Football wideout.
“The parties’ ongoing text communications reflect what really happened and completely discredit allegations of abduction and rape,” the motion, filed by attorney Rhonda Quagliana, a UVA Law lecturer and partner at MichieHamlett, reads, per reporting from The Daily Progress.
You might remember the name Rhonda Quagliana from the George Huguely case; she was one of the defense attorneys in that one.
Quagliana also represented Patrick McNamara, who was arrested in 2024 in the Rivanna Trail groper case, and later exonerated, after video evidence emerged that clearly demonstrated that another man was the perp.
The MichieHamlett website touts Quagliana’s work in the McNamara case, noting that “(g)roups routinely invite Rhonda to speak as an authority on false accusations, mistaken identity, and electronic evidence.”
Credit to Edrine here: that’s who you want filing your motions.
We know from Quagliana’s work on the Edrine case that the victim is a high-school acquaintance of Edrine, who, per the motion filed in court related to a request for bail, says he paid for the plane ticket that brought the victim to the Charlottesville-Albemarle area in August, which is when the rape and abduction is alleged to have taken place.
Albemarle County Police reported last week that it began its investigation of Edrine on Aug. 25, 2025, “after a victim reported being sexually assaulted the day prior,” according to the media release that went out on Feb. 5.
ICYMI
I confirmed the date of the initial report this morning in a back-and-forth with a police department spokesperson.
The purported text communications highlighted in the bail motion paint a different picture of what is alleged to have taken place.
The defense, per the Progress report, “concedes the two had unprotected sex, but says the complainant’s anger centered on exposure to bodily fluids – not coercion.”
“I was only concerned & annoyed about cumming in me,” the Progress quoted one purported text from the victim included in the bail motion.
The motion tries to gloss over the concession that the victim went to police and sought a forensic exam, pointing to purported texts from the victim in which she is claimed to have stated to police that “I never told you guys verbatim that he raped me,” and that she underwent the forensic exam to “make sure im clean & in the clear.”
The reporting from the Progress tells us that, around going to police to report whatever it was that she actually went to police to report to them, the victim “spent days moving freely about Charlottesville and surrounding Albemarle – including brunching alone and visiting Monticello – and then returned to Charlottesville willingly in September and later denied in writing that she had been raped.”
“As the complainant repeatedly confirmed, ‘a rape didn’t happen,'” the motion says, per the Progress.
Something happened between the two, though, because we also learn from the Progress reporting on the bail motion that “Edrine cut off communication with the woman on Oct. 5, and that she filed a formal Title IX complaint with the university three days later.”
Meaning: the victim went to police to file a report in August, went to UVA to file a Title IX complaint in October, as we’re being led to believe, by the “high-profile” attorney – that’s from her bio on her UVA Law page – that this is a case of he said, she said.
A jury may eventually agree with the defense on that point, but the important part to me isn’t what a jury eventually decides, but rather, the way the University of Virginia, and UVA Athletics, handled the situation involving Edrine.
ICYMI
We still don’t know if the school and the athletics department would have been made aware of the police investigation sooner than Oct. 8, but we now know that the University and the athletics higher-ups knew at that point.
What we still don’t know is what the University and UVA Athletics did with the information once it was made aware.
Obviously, a person accused of any crime is to be treated as innocent until proven guilty.
But.
I’m pausing here, for emphasis.
You have to investigate, right?
We’ll assume the University conducted an investigation, and that it came to a different conclusion than Albemarle County Police and the Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney, James Hingeley.
The police and the prosecutor saw enough from their investigation to take the matter to a grand jury.
UVA didn’t find enough to even take Jahmal Edrine off the football field.
There’s a wide gulf between those two vantage points.
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Chris Graham
