Costas Christofi is dead. The 55-year-old limousine driver bled to death on the floor of Jayson Williams' New Jersey mansion after the former NBA star allegedly accidentally shot him in the chest with a shotgun. After being shot, Christofi lay on the floor long enough to die from blood loss.
Only then did Williams call police. It seems Williams generally has a problem acting quickly. It took him more than a month to turn himself in to police. When he finally did so this past Monday, he was charged with manslaughter. A trial date has not yet been announced.
In the meantime, Williams is free on $250,000 bail.
None of these developments should come as a surprise. Williams has a long list of accusations haunting his past, including a charge that he fired a semiautomatic weapon in a public parking lot and assorted assault and battery claims. He also faces a hearing this week on an unrelated charge of assaulting a police officer.
But that sort of rap sheet has become expected of professional sports stars. His is even tame by the standards of some of his contemporaries.
The slow action on the part of police is also all too common. Any other suspect would have been locked up and questioned in February, when the crime occurred. Such is the luxury of being a sports star. You exist above the law, beyond the rules that normally apply to you and I.
Consider the case of former Dallas Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin. Last year he was able to shake felony drug charges because of a legal technicality. He was in an apartment when police raided it and found almost two ounces of marijuana and an untold number of ecstasy pills — not to mention the cocaine he had in his possession. This occurred only days after he finished probation for a previous cocaine conviction. But he was not charged at the time of his arrest, and he ended up getting off scott-free.
Had you been caught with those sorts of drugs in your dorm room, you would have inevitably been hauled off to jail. (Unless, of course, you are an ASU athlete.) It seems college athletes have to commit at least a few felonies before their full scholarships are pulled, if at all.
But I digress. The point is not which athlete has been found innocent this week or last week; the problem is that athletes and other celebrities are constantly dodging justice. The perennial examples being, of course, people like OJ Simpson and Mike Tyson — but there are many others, as I have just shown.
These talented morons make a mockery of the legal system by flaunting their wealth and fame. Yet once they escape the legal system they come right back into the limelight. Both Williams and Irvin were working as sports commentators at the time of their arrests. We accept these felons for the sports heroes they once were, not even considering for a moment the tarnished lives they have led.
By doing so we validate the process of turning our sporting arenas into halfway houses for felons and drug addicts. We are just as culpable as the team owner who looks the other way or the district attorney who decides not to prosecute.
I hope the Williams case turns out differently. No amount of money or fame should ever save him from being held responsible for such an abhorrent act. A man is dead because Williams had no regard for the safety of his friends and those around him.
This type of cavalier idiocy serves as a role model for men and boys across the country, and Williams will continue to serve as such until we start treating criminal athletes like the dangerous scum that they are.
James Manley is a journalism sophomore. Reach him at james.manley@asu.edu.
