Donte’ Stallworth Returns to the Field
Written by playerpress.com, Friday August 13 2010
When wide receiver Donte’ Stallworth took the field with his Baltimore Ravens teammates for a preseason game on Thursday, it marked his first time competing on the gridiron since the night that changed his life in March 2009.
Stallworth killed Mario Reyes, a 59-year-old Miami resident, in a car accident and spent time in jail for felony DUI manslaughter.
Thursday, Stallworth caught one pass for 26 yards against the Carolina Panthers, and a new article by Les Carpenter of Yahoo! Sports sheds light on the trials and tribulations Stallworth has gone through since the incident – including his insistence that his lawyers plea guilty and not try to escape a guilty verdict with a long court case that would have damaged the family of the man he killed.
The article says that Stallworth ordered his lawyers to accept a plea deal to felony DUI manslaughter despite evidence that easily created reasonable doubt as to whether Stallworth's legal intoxication actually caused the death of Reyes, who reportedly dashed across the street and was hit by Stallworth’s car.
Put simply, Reyes was out of the crosswalk on a busy highway, and it's entirely possible that Stallworth would have struck and killed Reyes even if Stallworth had never consumed a drop of alcohol in his life.
Carpenter's article also hints at other unreleased evidence that would have helped Stallworth's case. Per Carpenter, Stallworth refused to permit the lawyers to do it.Stallworth didn't want Reyes' family to relive the incident in court. "He could have taken 15 different approaches," Stallworth friend Steve Boucher said. "He could have had people persuade him to take a more aggressive [defensive] position. He wouldn't do that. He took responsibility.
"His biggest concern was for the gentleman's daughter. He wanted [Reyes'] family to know he was remorseful."
Carpenter reports that Stallworth's lawyers repeatedly "shouted" at the 2002 first-round pick to fight the case.
The irony," lawyer David Cornwell told Carpenter, "is that a lot of the media and public was angry with the deal that he took. And the thing they wanted, for him to go to trial, was the thing he was trying to avoid for the family."
The anger came not from the deal itself, but from the apparent wrist slap Stallworth received; a brief jail term and a year of low-grade house arrest. But NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell ignored the lenient sentence and the evidence that pointed to a possible acquittal and focused on the end result -- a guilty plea to felony DUI manslaughter.
For that, Stallworth missed a full year of football.
But he's now free to play, and Stallworth shared with Carpenter the message that he's conveying to "anyone who will listen."
"Any little decision you make will have a subsequent reaction," Stallworth said. "Be cognizant of your decisions."
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