DOVER – A former University of Delaware athlete already serving a six-year prison sentence for sex offenses was sentenced Thursday to 2½ additional years behind bars for other sexual attacks on young women.
Clay Conaway, 27, was sentenced in a southern Delaware courtroom more than a year after he pleaded guilty to third-degree rape and no contest to three counts of fourth-degree rape. He took plea agreements as he faced five counts of second-degree rape involving four separate women.
Conaway was sentenced to two years for third-degree rape, 90 days each on two counts of fourth-degree rape, and probation for the other fourth-degree rape charge. As part of the plea deal, prosecutors had agreed to ask for no more than four additional years in prison.
Had Conaway been tried and convicted of second-degree rape, he faced a minimum mandatory sentence of 10 years in prison on each count. Second-degree rape involves intentional penetration with any object or body part without consent, or with a person under age 16, that results in serious physical injury.
Third-degree rape involves sexual penetration without the victim’s consent, or with a person under age 16, that involves physical injury or serious mental or emotional injury. It carries a minimum mandatory term of two years behind bars and a maximum sentence of 25 years.
Fourth-degree rape is defined as intentional penetration with any object or body part without consent, or with a person under age 16. It is punishable by a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, but it does not involve mandatory prison time.
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Conaway, a former university baseball player, was accused of sexually assaulting several women between 2013 and 2018.
Defense attorney Joe Hurley said last year that the plea deals were motivated in large part by concerns about pretrial publicity that could affect the ability to find impartial jurors in southern Delaware’s Sussex County.
Conaway was sentenced in November 2019 to five years in prison after being found guilty of fourth-degree rape of another woman. He had been charged with first-degree rape in that case and could have been sentenced to life in prison if convicted of that charge.
The victim in that case testified that Conaway raped her after she drove to his family’s house in Sussex County three weeks after they connected on Bumble, a social app. Conaway sent her a nude picture of himself before they met.
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Following a second trial, a jury declined to convict Conaway of attempted second-degree rape and strangulation of another woman but found him guilty of third-degree unlawful sexual contact. That misdemeanor offense carries a presumptive sentence of probation, but the judge sentenced Conaway in January 2021 to one year in prison. Conaway was accused in that case of assaulting a fellow university student he met through the dating app Tinder in 2017 at his Newark apartment.
All of the other cases were in Sussex County. Prosecutors previously dismissed a count of second-degree rape after learning that the accuser had lied to police about having contact with Conaway after the encounter.
