Kenny Pratt, dismissed from the Iowa State men’s basketball team after being charged with sexual abuse last month, has been reinstated with the team and charges have been dropped.

A third degree sexual abuse charge against Pratt was dropped Wednesday when Story County Attorney Mary Richards decided there was not enough evidence to move forward.

“I made an assessment of whether or not I think we could prove the case,” she said Thursday. “I declined to file the county attorney’s information and the case was dropped.”

Richards said by law she could not disclose details of the case. Pratt could be charged again with the crime at a later date, but Richards said that isn’t probable.

Pratt, 21, was charged Oct. 8 for allegedly sexually assaulting a 19-year-old female student in a Willow Hall room. He was reinstated with the basketball team after a Thursday morning meeting with university officials.

“After discussing with university counsel and Kenny Pratt’s attorney additional information that led to the dismissal of the charges against Kenny, I recommended that Athletic Director Gene Smith work with [Coach] Tim Floyd to reinstate Kenny to our basketball team,” Murray Blackwelder, interim vice president for external affairs, said in a prepared statement.

Pratt’s reinstatement was effective immediately.

“Obviously we would not reinstate Kenny to the team if we didn’t feel it was the right thing to do,” Smith said. “We will provide Kenny with the help he needs to deal with this situation.”

But Pratt’s lawyer, Jerry Crawford, a Des Moines attorney, said Pratt should never have been charged.

“This is one of the most incomplete investigations I’ve seen in 22 years,” Crawford said. “It’s just a failure to find the truth. The incompetence of the investigators is just breath-taking.”

Crawford said ISU Department of Public Safety officials failed to follow up on leads and ignored the facts. “Any half-way decent investigator could have seen the facts in this case. Unfortunately, the Department of Public Safety at Iowa State didn’t get the job done,” he said.

DPS Director Loras Jaeger declined to comment Thursday. He referred all questions to Richards.

Crawford said athletic officials have been cooperative. He said though Pratt should never have been dismissed from the team, he doesn’t blame Smith or Floyd.

“They were the people who made a decision to dismiss him, but they had a report in front of them from DPS that was very misleading and inaccurate,” Crawford said.

Pratt, a junior guard/forward from Chicago, played last season for the College of Eastern Utah. He averaged 21.5 points and 8.3 rebounds per game and was an honorable mention All-American. He has never played for ISU.

Pratt’s situation has brought to the forefront ISU’s athletic disciplinary policies. At the athletic council meeting Tuesday, Blackwelder asked council members to recommend a uniform policy for disciplinary cases such as Pratt’s. He said the university now deals with each case on an individual basis.

Some council members indicated they did not support dismissing players before they are convicted of a crime. ISU Vice President for Business and Finance Warren Madden said he has requested that university and county officials get together to review the handling of potential criminal cases.