The Texas Monthly expose on Baylor and Sam Ukwuachu will produce enough troubling questions — for head coach Art Briles and Baylor associate dean Bethany McCraw in particular.

The story, or lack of it, should also trouble sports journalists.  According to reports, the assault happened in October 2013.  The Waco Police Department did not press charges and sent the case to the district attorney for evaluation.  In March 2014, the assistant DA Hilary Laborde decided to move ahead.  On June 25, 2014, a grand jury indicted Ukwuachu, and he was arrested.

This Deadspin article, great work by Diana Moskovitz, provides helpful details, including a copy of the true bill of indictment returned by the grand jury.

This is where things begin to get murky.

As Moskovitz points out, prosecutors’ choice to go the grand jury route does invite questions, because a grand jury process is, by nature and law, more secretive than a public arrest.  When an athlete, or any suspect, is arrested, the accompanying mugshots, and sometimes even “perp walks,” draw attention.

Still, in McLennan County, once someone is indicted, it is publicized.  Supposedly.

The Waco Tribune-Herald posts indictments twice a month to its website, and those indictments remain available for public viewing.  The report of June 25, 2014, indictments, when Ukwuachu was indicted, mentions more than 100 names, and five specifically mention some form of sexual abuse.

Ukwuachu’s name does not appear in this list. Why not? Was the name redacted from the list before it was given to the Waco newspaper?

According to Texas Monthly, when the requested information on Ukwuachu’s indictment and arrest, the received “a letter declaring that all information outside of the Incident Report following Doe’s visit to Hillcrest Hospital the day after her encounter with Ukwuachu was exempt from the law requiring disclosure.”

Still, if that’s the case, under what judgment was Ukwuachu’s name deleted from a public list, and not the rest?  If it’s exempt from “the law requiring disclosure,” why publicize indictments at all?  The 100-plus folks whose arrests were publicized would wish they got the same break as Ukuwuachu.

True, McLennan County DA Abelino Reyna is a 1997 graduate of Baylor Law School. With no specific response on his office’s part, however, the question remains, and is troubling.

It should also be mentioned that the prosecuting DA, LaBorde, also went to Baylor, but that did not stop her from investigating and then prosecuting Ukwuachu

I have reached out to the Waco Tribune-Herald via e-mail.  The McLennan County DA’s office (no e-mail listed) has refused all interview requests.

The first report appeared in the Tribune-Herald on Aug. 5, more than 13 months after the indictments were handed down.  The lag time invites questions, particularly related to the local newspaper’s function as a watchdog.

As any competent sports writer, college or pro, will tell you, the good reporters know how to uncover such information. Whether through strategic Web searches or well-placed sources, they know when players are arrested amazingly soon after it happens and can guide their readers through the court process.

Court-related documents are available online through databases like Scribd, as Moskovitz demonstrated in her article.

But before casting too much blame on the newspaper, realize that no reporter’s system can do everything, and an insular community like Waco is a prime culture to thwart such information gathering.  For whatever reason, the public did not learn of the announcement until twelve days before the trial itself began.

According to the Deadspin article, Judge Matt Johnson did issue a gag order, but that did not happen until Aug. 7 of this year, shortly before the trial began.

As the handling of the Ukwuachu case is discussed, concern will be directed at Baylor personnel, who admitted a player with problems at his previous school.  Dan Wolken rightly took Briles to task in a USA Today column for putting Ukwuachu’s victim, and every female at Baylor, at risk by allowing him to transfer in.

This concern relates closely to constitutional guarantees for open trials.  This right belongs not to the media, but to the public.  Community members have a right to know what is going on in matters that relate to their public safety, and it is the news media’s duty to provide that information.

When information is withheld from the public, as it was in the list of indictments published on the WacoTrib.com website, the system has failed, and citizens deserve to know how and why.