NJ WILL RETRY JAYSON WILLIAMS, NO RACIAL BIAS PROVEN
In Somerville, Hunterdon County, NJ, former NBA star Jayson Williams was told by a judge that his defense attorney was unable to prove that any racial bias on the part of a county investigator constituted prosecutorial misconduct during his first trial back in 2004. Further, Williams' motion to overturn his conviction of tampering with evidence and witnesses to cover up his shooting of a limo driver in his own house with his own gun was denied. In order to make even the suspicion of racial bias a non-issue, state Attorney General's office has granted Hunterdon County Prosecutor J. Patrick Barnes's request and will be taking over the case.
New Jersey Criminal Lawyer Blog's Take: Apparently, evidence that a Captain William Hunt uttered the "n-word" during the course of the investigation was not enough to taint the evidence which showed that, upon the course of a house tour of his residence, Jayson Williams shot the driver-guest with his own shotgun, then wiped off his fingerprints, placed the gun in the driver's hand, directed his brother to lie to 911 operators about the shooting, change clothes giving his old clothes to a guest to hide, jump in the pool to wash off, and order all guests to lie that they were downstairs when they heard the gunshot. It seems that the Captain's second "wrong" does not make Williams' first "wrongs" right.
Jayson Williams was hoping that his retrial for "reckless manslaughter" scheduled for January, 2010 would be dismissed due to the offensive utterance, theorizing that that word was evidence of prosecutorial misconduct motivated by racial bias, that would call into question all the evidence produced by that investigation. Williams also hoped that his conviction on the cover-up charges would be dismissed on the same theory. For some reason, three years had passed before the Judge received a letter from the Hunterdon County prosecutor notifying him of the use of this racial epithet by a county investigator.
So a jury did not believe that on February 13th, 2002 following a night out to see the Harlem Globetrotters and dinner, Williams acted in a way that demonstrated "extreme indifference to the value of human life," but that he should be retried to determine whether or not he "disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk of death," for which Williams could serve 10 years in prison. The evidence that the jury heard was not tainted by a racially biased investigation, and the fact that the jury could not decide on one count with the evidence presented is sufficient to warrant a retrial.
It is too bad his former teammates, now Globetrotters, Chris Morris and Benoit Benjamin, Curly "Boo" Johnson and Paul "Showtime" Gaffney, among other guests on Williams' house tour didn't bring more reason to the situation. It is impossible to foresee the array of crimes that a defendant may be charged with due to incorporated lesser charges.
