The Sad Saga and Downfall of ex-NBA Star Jayson Williams…Accepts Plea And faces Prison Sentence

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Today ex-New Jersey Nets and former NBA star Jayson Williams sad, and long drawn out self-inflicted downfall both personally and financially is about to come to a conclusive resolve. The retired NBA star accepted a plea deal in  his shooting case, and will face prison.

A person with knowledge of the case against retired NBA star Jayson Williams says the former player has agreed to a plea deal that would send him to prison for up to three years for shooting a driver55-year-old limousine driver Costas “Gus” Christofi at Williams’s estate .

It has been reported that Williams was playing with a shotgun while giving a tour of his 30,000-square home when the weapon fired, killing Christofi.

In 1992, Williams was accused of breaking a beer mug over a patron’s head at a saloon in Chicago. Two years later, he was accused of firing a semiautomatic weapon into the parking lot at the Meadowlands Sports Complex. He was never criminally charged in either case,which led to him being free to murder the innocent driver in cold blood.

A report concerning the case is quoted here from Wikipedia….

That April, Williams was acquitted of the more serious charges against him, but the court’s jury deadlocked on a charge of reckless manslaughter, and he currently faces a retrial on that charge. He was convicted on four counts of trying to cover up the shooting. In January 2003, the family of Costas “Gus” Christofi settled with Williams in a wrongful death civil lawsuit for $2.75 million.

On April 21, 2006, a Hunterdon County appeals court ruled that Williams can be retried on a reckless manslaughter charge stemming from the shooting death of Christofi.^[2][3] The court repeatedly delayed the retrial for a series of reasons, such as the State’s 2008 appeal of a ruling relating to prosecutorial misconduct at the first trial.^[4] A September 2009 hearing is expected to resolve the misconduct issue so that the retrial can begin.^[5] The maximum sentence for the charged manslaughter is 10 years…. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Williams

Williams had been offered plea deals that would have allowed him to spend less time in jail, but they were turned down by the defense attorneys.

Maybe it has something to do with his contentious divorce he is going through with his wife Tanya Young Williams.

She filed the divorce papers on Valentine’s day of this year, because she is mad and fed up with the conflicted Williams. 

The divorce papers were filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court just hours before the seventh anniversary of the day Jayson fatally shot his limo driver in his New Jersey mansion after a booze-fueled night spent entertaining a some Harlem Globetrotters and friends. 

In the papers filed Tanya alleges that Williams threatened to kill her, faked committing suicide, falsely said that he had stomach cancer and urinated in the kitchen sink. His wife also allegedly found cocaine and condoms in his drawer, sources familiar with the case said.

Tanya Williams, who is black, also claims in the court papers that he cruelly bragged to her that he performed oral sex “on white girls.”

“Here is a guy who has spent wildly and dissipated marital assets and has, of course, acted reckless and been just absent, violent and not a father, not a husband,” said her lawyer, Malcolm Taub.

That sounds like a reason to want to be locked away in prison for as many years as possible.

One of the earlier offers, the person said, came just before a hearing last month on whether a racial slur used by a detective and other conduct by the county prosecutor’s office should result in dismissal of the reckless manslaughter count and the cover-up convictions.

 State Superior Court Judge Edward Coleman later rejected the defense’s claim that, had they known about the slur, they would have changed their trial strategy.

If calling a black perpetrator of a murder or any crime at all a racial slur, in this case it was the ”N” word, is the grounds to be acquitted of a crime, then a lot of brothers in prison would be set free, and some of them need to stay there.

I am not condoning the vile usage of the word by any race of law men, but I think the murder trumps the racial slur.I say send the person that used it to sensitivity training, but it is an insult to the deceased family, to allow it to be used as a grounds for dismissal.

I contend that the deliberate use of a racial slur is basically bad behavior, but the use of it in this investigation had no affect on the trial of Jayson Williams, and would not have been used to impeach any of the evidence. It simply was an O.J. Simpson style of racial defense, but the dynamics are incredibly different.

There are some actual occurences where it could be used to impeach a witness, or cast suspicion on an investigator, and the false usage here only diminishes the relevance of the real cases. We need to stop using race as an excuse for all of our bad behavior, and I can see how that might frustrate a lot of white people who  generally are not racist, but may not be held up as examples of racially sensitive beings…I mean are any of us immune to being imperfectly human,…I don’t think so.

Jayson Williams will plead guilty to aggravated assault charges on Friday and will have to serve at least 18 months in prison.

That should give him time to think about how to deal with his soon to be ex-wife, as well as make it difficult for her to get at him.

I used to admire Jayson Williams, because his father was a construction contractor just like my dad, and he, just like me, had been involved in expanding the family business. I also saw on a documentary about him, how he actually helped build his expansive estate, along with his now deceased father. It reminded me of my own family, except without the NBA money and fame.

It is truly sad for me to see how he made a shamble of his life, and I can only hope he gets it together.

For more details on these sad developments for Jayson Williams, click on the links below…

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=4670272

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/regional/item_2mrfaFcTI6sqKNk1E1UCvM

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/11/19/general-nj-jayson-williams-plea_7140600.html

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