Donte' Stallworth returns to the field
Posted by Mike Florio on August 13, 2010 8:25 AM ET
On Thursday night, Ravens receiver Donte' Stallworth played in an NFL game for the first time since the March 2009 accident that changed his life -- and ended the life of Mario Reyes, a 59-year-old Miami resident.
Stallworth caught one pass for 26 yards against the Panthers, and he's expected to make the Baltimore team and play an important role in the rotation.
A recent article from Les Carpenter of Yahoo! Sports suggests that Stallworth's return could have come a lot sooner, but for his decision to take full responsibility for the accident. Per Carpenter, 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" Reyes' death. 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.
But 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."
For Stallworth, two key decisions have shaped the past two years. The decision to drive drunk, and the decision to take full responsibility for a consequence that his drunk driving may not have actually caused.