A former UA assistant track and field coach who was convicted last month of assaulting a student athlete pleaded guilty Monday to stalking and violating a restraining order.
Craig Carter, 50, was convicted March 30 of two counts of aggravated assault — one with a deadly weapon — in connection with an April 20, 2015, incident involving former University of Arizona thrower Baillie Gibson. The two were involved in a sexual relationship that Gibson says was not consensual.
After his arrest, Carter admitted to campus police that he choked Gibson while threatening her with a box cutter. It took jurors less than three hours to convict him.
On Monday, Carter accepted an agreement with the Pima County Attorney’s Office, pleading guilty to felony counts of domestic violence-related stalking and aggravated violation of a protective order. The stalking charge stems from 57 text messages that Carter sent Gibson in the days following the incident in his office. In exchange for his guilty plea on the stalking charge, the state agreed to drop the other charge in the case, disrupting an educational institution.
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In a separate case, Carter was facing four counts of aggravated violation of a protective order, after he tried to contact Gibson’s roommate, Julie Labonté, via Skype and Facebook. In exchange for Carter’s guilty plea on one of the charges, the other three will be dropped.
Carter will serve three years in prison for the stalking charge and 2½ years for violating the protective order, but the sentences will run concurrently. They will also run concurrently with whatever term Pima County Superior Court Judge Teresa Godoy imposes in the assault case, for which Carter is to be sentenced on May 14.
Carter will be required to serve 85 percent of his sentence and will be subject to supervised release when he gets out of prison, Godoy said Monday.
Days after his conviction, Carter’s attorneys filed a motion for a new trial, citing several instances of what they called prosecutorial misconduct and legal errors by the judge. As part of the plea agreement, Carter agreed to withdraw the motion.
The plea included language that allows Godoy to impose a $150,000 fine, and Carter will be required to pay restitution to the victims in the case. While restitution figures have not yet been determined, Carter will pay no more than $25,000 to Gibson and no more than $10,000 to Labonté, Godoy said.
“Baillie is extremely relieved with the outcome,†Gibson’s attorney, Lynne Cadigan, told the Star. “She feels safe for the first time in years.â€
Carter was taken into custody after his March 30 conviction and is awaiting further sentencing in the Pima County jail, after which he will be transferred to prison.
While Monday’s plea agreement resolves the outstanding criminal charges against him, he’s still defending himself in a civil suit that Gibson filed against Carter and the UA. The state-funded defense in the case has exceeded $1 million in attorneys’ fees, and both parties have requested a jury trial on the matter.
