Sunday, January 27, 2013

Ray Lewis Double Murder 101

Okay, let's get this out of the way now.

Plenty has been forgotten, twisted, exaggerated, or fluffed up since the infamous night of the Cobalt Lounge in 2000 in Atlanta.

I for one, do not think Ray Lewis literally murdered Jacinth Baker and Richard Lollar. Star athletes never do any of their own dirty work, much less their bloody dirty work.

That said, the image rehabilitation and Saint-ification of Ray Lewis since that time has been nothing short of the most dishonest, ridiculous, and nauseating episodes in modern sports.

Yet, I have no energy to rail against it, full throat. Nor interest. It's so ludicrous, it's like writing a manifesto on Britney Spears' lack of musical talent.

Whenever it comes to Ray Lewis, my fullest sentiment is approximately a chortle and a sarcastic "well, of course."

That said, here's the best Ray Lewis Murder 101 story I've seen, and people can make their own final judgement on all things "Ray Ray" with this as a guide. You should read the whole thing, but because I am never failing in helping you readers be lazy, here's a few key edited 'graphs to consider.

After racing from the scene, Lewis’ limo didn’t return to his hotel, the Georgian, but instead to the Holiday Inn Express where Sweeting was staying. Lewis then took a cab back to the Georgian. 
It didn’t take long for police to find the limo, shot through with bullet holes, blood in the interior. It sat just a mile from the crime scene, and when cops walked into the lobby, they found Lewis’ driver, Fassett, trembling and chain-smoking. 
Fassett told the police he’d seen Sweeting, Oakley and Lewis all fighting and provided details that only an eyewitness could know. He said he’d heard Oakley boast, “I stabbed mine,” and Sweeting reply, “I stabbed mine, too.” When police got to Lewis’ room, they found blood there, too — but not Lewis, who had fled to his fiancĂ©e’s family home. 
A few hours after the murders, at about 6 a.m., Lewis had called Robertson and asked her to go to the Georgian and pack up everything he’d left behind. A jailhouse informant, meanwhile, told cops that Lewis was using one of his sisters to relay messages to Sweeting, telling him not to worry, that Lewis would never betray him. 
Lewis himself felt he had little to worry about. The Ravens were standing firmly behind him. Lewis’ own private investigators beat the cops to just about every witness in the limo; they all got lawyers. His driver, Fassett, became increasingly unsure of what went down that night. 
The trial began on May 15, 2000, and quickly fell apart. The state’s star witness, Fassett, recanted much of what he had told police. He swore he’d never seen Lewis strike anyone. 
By the trial’s second week, Lewis wasn’t even attempting to appear respectful. He sat at the defense table and scrawled his autograph over and over. Finally, on June 4, Lewis’ attorney and the prosecution cut a deal. Lewis would testify against Sweeting and Oakley in exchange for one year’s probation on obstruction of justice. Lewis testified he saw Oakley fighting in the melee and that Sweeting had told Lewis he’d been punching with the same hand that cupped a knife. 
Here, too, the prosecution miscalculated. On June 13, 2000, the jury acquitted both men on charges of murder and assault. They spent just five hours deliberating.
Chalk it up to police incompetence, the force of an NFL team/owner racing to save his "investment" and ultimately, a just outcome.

I think Ray Lewis did exactly - and mostly - what he ultimately plead guilty to: obstruction of justice.

In an awful street fight between his thug friends, and a group of other random thugs.

The NFL should have absolutely suspended him for a considerable amount of time, because obstructing justice in a double murder is a seriously awful act. Minimum 4 games, upwards to a year. Instead, he just paid out money, and returned to the league as a superstar, with virtually no price to be paid as a bankable endorser.

Now, Ray Lewis will retire directly to ESPN - where I think he has a chance to be quite good, if you can compartmentalize all of the above - and also become a special consultant to the NFL.

To which I say, as always... /chortle... "Well, of course."

12 comments:

  1. As long as Baker's family can't tie his death to CTE and file a lawsuit against the league, then the NFL could not give a shit less.

    ReplyDelete
  2. We don't really know what happened that night - one way or the other. And the reason we don't know what happened is that Ray Lewis and the NFL got to the witnesses, destroyed evidence and made sure no one remembered anything. In other words, we don't know because Ray Lewis doesn't want us to know.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Czabe, don't you know that this is raaaacist?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I guess i'll be watching even less of espn in the future...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Now that 63Kraft has played the race card for them, the lefties don't have to bother commenting and can go back to drinking the Obama Kool-Aid (or whatever else it is that they do).

    ReplyDelete
  6. This article comes from the same person who fawned over Mike Tyson a couple months back. Of course Mike Tyson is only a convicted sex offender.

    ReplyDelete
  7. sugah ray was involved. did he pull the trigger; aka knife? probably not.
    did he obstruct justice (lie, basically) for his buddies? eff yeah.
    was the dude killed a thug? probably.
    will the thug's parents/homies gather and ask ray "how do you intend to placate me?" a la boomhauer? probably, yes.
    will the ravens win the SB? doubtful.
    will joe flacco continue to have the most annoying line adjustment/snapcount twatever voice (blue 80 nsaslly repeated over and over) in sb history? yes. his voice is more annoying than Ellen's pinnochio clothes and rosie o'donnell's fake interest in her beard tom cruise combined. anyone for tuna?

    ReplyDelete
  8. No racist card to be played KateyDewhurst . I dont think anybody is saying Ray Ray is completely innocent here. The fact of the matter is he plead guitly to obstruction of justice. Have you heard ANYTHING bad about him since that incident??? I havent. Is it possible that he is one of the few atheletes that realized how he could have lost it all and decided that he really did need to change his life around. I guess not, that would be too good of a story for you.

    ReplyDelete
  9. OK, Tyson did prison time for his acts. Lewis skated. The Ray Lewis thing smells of a typical hip-hop gone mainstream ala Snoop, Jay Z, Puff Daddy, etc. These guys all got their street cred first, then their ultra riches. Ray's playing the same damn game. Oh, look. There's Snoop Doggy Dogg! Is he smoking a blunt? Looks like it. Wow. He's soo cool. Snoop!!! Look at my titties, throw me some beads. Ray's taking the whole religious route and not really going the hip hop way in his reincarnation. Like he found religion in prison without going there. He sucks and he's a main reason I can't pull for the Ravens though stealing the Browns has something to do with it too. Go Niners.

    ReplyDelete
  10. One of things that was left out was that the major of Atlanta; Bill Campbell, was being investigated for corruption at the time. Campbell and about 40 of his staff members went to jail. He used Ray Lewis to distract the public on the corruption investigation. It leaked later that the mayor ordered Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard to charge Lewis with murder. The district attorney knew he did not do it, but others felt he did it as a tactic to make Lewis testify against the two other men. It worked, but Howard lost the murder case. If Lewis was charged with obstructing justice, and not murder he would have had a separate trial and most likely would have gone to jail. The DA did not question all the witnesses, and made other mistake which was another crime in itself.

    The other two men were not saints either, both had records and one witness say one of them break a champagne bottle over one of the men charged with murder. Bad things happen to bad people, when you do stupid things like that. Especially when Buckhead was having series crime and gang issues during that time

    Like most of the articles that have been written this week about it is missing most of the key facts. They are being written in that are outside Baltimore, Miami, Atlanta or any other major market. The writers have nothing locally to write about so they are blowing off dust on an old story and have their writer friends on twitter promote it. I’m so done with these types of newspapers writers.

    If you want to say Lewis should have went to jail, your right. He should have gone to jail for obstructing justice, not for murder.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Fantastic web site! I am loving it!! Will be again afterwards to go through some a lot more. I am having your feeds also
    atlanta limo service
    atlanta limousines

    ReplyDelete