There have been plenty of highlights and low-lights in former Eagle receiver Donte Stallworth’s seven year career up to this point, but his best catch wasn’t on the football field. It clearly was hiring attorney Christopher Lyons.
Stallworth plead guilty to a DUI manslaughter charge yesterday and will spend his next 30 days in jail. He’ll also be under house arrest for two years, be on probation for ten, and will eventually have to serve 1,000 hours of community service. A light sentence given the severity of Stallworth’s crime. Without the plea deal Donte could have served 15 years in prison.
Here’s the question I pose to all of you: had a typical middle-class male committed the same crime Stallworth did, would he have made out as well as the wealthy NFL receiver? I don’t give a damn how apologetic Donte was, or that he stayed on the scene and cooperated with the officers after the accident. That’s his duty for screwing up and driving drunk in the first place. Some may feel that the sentence was fair considering the way Stallworth handled the ordeal, but how fair was the situation for the victim who lost his life waiting to catch a bus?
Donte Stallworth killed an innocent man. He made the choice to drive drunk (way over the legal limit, for the record) and while he’ll have to live with that decision for the rest of his life, the punishment from our legal system should have been more harsh. 30 days in jail for taking someone’s life…that’s just flat out disgraceful. The lesson of the day for the wealthy? You can get away with anything by throwing a bit of cash at the problem. Here’s hoping the NFL lays the law down more fairly than our broken judicial system.
DISHONORABLE MENTION:
Laker “Fans”
It’s not the first time nor will it be the last time a city celebrates a Championship by rioting, but after the Lakers dispatched the Magic in five games the other night all hell broke loose in the streets of LA. For a fan base that only cares about its teams when they’re winning, you have to wonder where all this pent up passion and excitement came from. This was all particularly ironic given the fact that the only time Laker fans stand during a game is to leave early or try to catch a free t-shirt.
Gotta love Police Chief William Bratton’s comments after the dust settled and the fires had been put out: “[Bratton] commended officers for showing restraint despite ‘a lot of provocation from a number of knuckleheads.’”
