Recently, however, this venomous public sentiment towards trouble-making athletes has started to turn the tide on how the legal system treats our stars. Athletes have been forced to be increasingly accountable for their off-the-field, in some cases, possibly to a fault. Michael Vick recently served a 19-month sentence for an admittedly heinous crime, but was it really any worse than when Leonard Little killed a woman after plowing through a red light while drunk (0.19 BAC) in 1998? Little served no jail time after being convicted of manslaughter, being tagged with just four years of probation and 1000 hours of community service. (Some people would say that Little placed the toughest punishment on himself, as this article discusses his attempted suicide attempt shortly after the accident. However, Little didn't learn his lesson enough to not repeat his mistake, as he was cited for a DWI in 2004. Little was, however, acquitted of the charges.) Vick was a guy who no one felt sorry for, and the judge who laid down his sentence made an example of him. No one was going to do what Michael Vick had done without knowing what the repercussions would be. Some people said it wasn't enough of a punishment; some said it was too strong. My opinion (as a legal mind) is that had the defendant not been a professional football player, the sentence would have been much more lenient. I think the shock of someone who makes millions upon millions of dollars running some small-peanuts dog fighting ring made the atrocious acts Vick and his henchmen committed even more horrific. Had Vick just been another guy from Newport News, I doubt there would have been any jail time assigned to him. That's not to say that Vick didn't deserve any punishment he got, but the level of punishment did surprise me.
Vick's conviction and punishment doesn't sit as an outlier. The Duke lacrosse team story is an example of a prosecutor seeing an opportunity to make a name for himself and creating a charge where there was no crime. Ben Roethlisberger's latest run in with the law may not have ended in a charge, but while explaining how there simply wasn't enough evidence against Big Ben to press charges, the Georgia prosecutor in charge of the case made sure that his name, voice, and face were in the media as much as possible. This type of thing has been happening a lot recently, including a case that is affecting the best basketball team in the state of Minnesota, which brings me to the point of this article. (Longest article intro ever, right? I know, but it's my story, damn it, and I'll tell it however I want!)
Trevor Mbakwe was part of the much heralded 2009 University of Minnesota Golden Gophers men's basketball team. Mbakwe started his collegiate career at Marquette, but transferred after just one season for reasons that remain unclear. After one season at Miami Dade Junior College, Trevor decided to head back to Division I basketball by joining his hometown Gophers for the 2009-2010 season. Unfortunately, Mbakwe's season ended before it even started. In April of 2009, a young woman was assaulted outside a party that was being held by the Miami Dade basketball team. The victim of the assault said that her attacker was a very tall black person and that she assumed he was a member of the team, so she "Googled" the basketball team and "immediately" identified Mbakwe as the assailant. The victim later described her attacker as being 6'6", 190 lbs (Mbakwe is listed at 6'8", 250 lbs). A six person lineup was used to help identify the attacker, which included Mbakwe, and again the victim was able to identify Trevor as the attacker. Mbakwe's side of the story is that he was at home during the attack and that he has witnesses to corroborate his story. The only person who can place Mbakwe at the scene is the victim. The attack took place just before 3 am, and it is unclear whether or not the victim had been drinking during the night.
Clearly, I was not there during the attack, but this whole thing seems a little thing to me (Pardon me while I get all legal on you for a couple of paragraphs. I may not be a lawyer, but I did graduate law school, so that's close enough for me to opine on this). The main (possibly the only) piece of evidence the prosecution has tying Mbakwe to the crime is the eyewitness testimony of the victim. Eyewitness testimony is obviously admissible, but the US Supreme Court case of Manson v. Brathwaite states that the court can disallow such testimony if the procedure used to get the identification is overly suggestive. Now, I'm not sure how many athletically built 6'6"-6'9" black men live in Miami, but the concept of narrowing down the list of suspects immediately to a group of 12 men on a basketball team seems somewhat prejudicial. This is not the fault of the police, of course, as the victim looked up the players on her own accord, but regardless of this, she independently narrowed down the pool of potential suspects in what appears to me to be an unreasonable manner. Aside from the method used to identify Mbakwe, eyewitness identifications are inherently unreliable. Studies show that about 50% of eyewitness ID's are erroneous, and up to 75% of wrongful convictions are a direct result to incorrect identification by witnesses. When you combine these factors together with the possibility that the victim was under the influence of alcohol, the fact that it was in the middle of the night and that the encounter was very brief, I find it hard to believe any prosecutor would feel comfortable basing an entire case off of the victim's word.
Mbakwe, for his part, has a number of witnesses who will state that he was indeed at home during the attack. Mbakwe's mother stated that her son came home on April 3rd, the same day as the attack, because of threats he had been receiving. There are some phone records, as well as Facebook records, which Mbakwe's attorney claims will further his client's claims of innocence. Obviously, being that this is an ongoing criminal proceeding (proceeding being a bit of a misnomer, as nothing has happened for months), neither side is saying much to the media about what they know. The facts I have laid out here are pretty much all the public has to go on, but it is pretty clear to me that the case against Mbakwe is pretty thin. I understand that criminal investigations can take quite some time, but in a situation like this, with one witness (who doubles as the victim) and one suspect, 14 months seems a bit excessive.
Mbakwe was first scheduled to go to trial last December, but his attorneys were unable to clear the date with all of Mbakwe's witnesses, so a continuance was issued until January. Another continuance followed the first one, and then another, and then another. Rumor has it (I stress that this is a rumor, as my source is a source of Myron Metcalf of the Star Tribune) that one reason the prosecution continues to push the court date back is because they are having trouble convincing the victim to cooperate. Mbakwe's attorney has, in the past, expressed difficulty in getting a statement from the victim. So let me get this straight...The prosecutions entire case appears to rest on the testimony of a reluctant victim? This just doesn't make any sense. Having worked in the world of prosecutorial law, I understand the reluctance on the part of the District Attorney to simply throw away a case in which a seemingly innocent young woman was bludgeoned by a random passerby, but when no case exists against the defendant, there comes a time when the prosecution needs to let things go.
Under normal circumstances, the charges against Mbakwe would represent but a lasting nuisance for the average person. For Trevor, these ongoing criminal charges have caused him to lose an entire season of basketball. Mbakwe was and is a player some NBA personnel believe has a future in the league, but he has missed out on important developmental time while waiting for his case to be resolved. I obviously don't know whether Mbakwe is innocent or guilty, or whether the prosecution has some evidence that they are holding onto until trial that will prove damning for Mbakwe, but what I do know is that a young man who may have done nothing wrong whatsoever has basically lost a year of his life to this process. My gut tells me that this case will never go to trial; that prosecutors will drop the charges before the scheduled trial. My fear is that this is a case of an ambitious prosecutor who sees an opportunity to make a name for himself by going after a high-profile defendant and is trying anything he can to prolong this trial. My fears are somewhat tempered by the fact that, try as I might, I cannot find a single name of a prosecutor on the case. Mbakwe's attorney, Gregory Samms, on the other hand, has had his name plastered all over the local newspapers for months. Regardless of the reasons, the case against Mbakwe has seemingly turned into more of a witch hunt than a criminal case.
As a Gopher fan, I hope things work out in a manner that allows Trevor to suit up for the team next winter. Rumors have started swirling that Mbakwe is considering a transfer, possibly to Memphis (a school that has never had a problem accepting athletes with character issues). If Mbakwe does indeed transfer, that will mean that the entire 2009 recruiting class (Mbakwe, Justin Cobbs (transferred this week), and Royce White) will be gone with only one of them having played at all. Right now, however, Mbakwe would do well to worry less about basketball and worry more about clearing his name. If his case really does hinge on his buddies testifying that he was with them at the time of the incident, he would be well advised to give those guys a call and get them in Miami, ASAP. The faster this situation is resolved, the better.
Hopefully, Trevor won't become just another victim of the system.
