Boy is it great to be a player in the NFL! Cleveland Browns wide receiver Donte’ Stallworth was sentenced to 30 days for killing a pedestrian while driving drunk yesterday. Stallworth struck and killed Mario Reyes on March 14, a day after earning a $4.5 million roster bonus. Stallworth also reached a financial settlement with Reyes’ family to avoid a potential lawsuit. It gets worst though! He only has to serve 24 days of those 30 days because the judge is giving him credit for one day already served, and in the state of Florida for this sort of crime, you get 5 days off your sentence for every 30 days you serve in jail. My problem though is how does this happen? 24 days!
These NFL players are being allowed to get away with anything. You can drink & drive, kill a person and not spend significant time in jail. And oh yea, you get to keep your job. Back in 1998 Rams defensive end Leonard Little, served only 90 days in jail for killing a women while driving drunk. But to no surprise, he was arrested again in 2004 for driving drunk. Thank goodness he didn’t kill anyone this time, but as you can see his 90 days in jail didn’t stop him from getting right back on the road … drunk! Stallworth has to serve only 24 days in jail. Do you really think that this is going to stop him? Yea he’s showing remorse now, but once this passes over he’ll be back to not caring anymore. The everyday person gets up to 15 years in jail and doesn’t have a chance to finagle out of it. The everyday person loses their job before even being convicted of a crime; but not these players. They may get a 1 year suspension, but they’ll be back on the field shortly after.
When things like this begin to happen I start to lose faith in the justice system. All that seems to matter now-a-days is that if you make millions of dollars for someone, you now have a chance to get away with murder, rape, extortion, or whatever you may do. What message is being sent to our kids? Come on America! Think about that.