More than a month after a Payne County court gave "youthful offender" status to Jesse Mack Butler , the prosecutor in the rape and assault case has issued a statement trying to explain what happened.

Butler's negotiated sentence of community service, rehabilitation, counseling and a curfew triggered protests in Stillwater, where the former high school baseball player was prosecuted on charges of attempted rape in the first-degree, rape by instrumentation, sexual battery, forcible oral sodomy, domestic assault and battery by strangulation and violating a protective order.

He ultimately pleaded no contest to all 11 counts filed against him in a plea deal that let him avoid prison.

Now Laura Austin Thomas, the district attorney for Payne County, has issued a statement saying that her off

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