Pros and Cons (4 page)

In the confusion, Billan asked for permission to first wash the blood from her hands. Though Bates gave his permission, he threatened to harm the child if she tried to escape. But when Billan spotted the keys to the Mitsubishi sitting on the kitchen counter when she was rinsing her hands off in the sink, she grabbed them and dashed out the door. Before she could start the vehicle, Marr came running from the apartment in an attempt to stop her. Quickly locking the doors, Billan started the car and sped off toward her apartment to get help.

When Billan reached her apartment complex, she went directly to a neighbor’s apartment. “I gave her a towel to clean up the blood,” her neighbor said in an interview for this book. “Then I called the police. When they showed up at my house, the officers referred to Patrick as ‘the Falcons person.’ One of the officers had responded to a domestic violence call at their home before.”

After Billan went to the hospital for medical treatment, the police went to Bates’s apartment and arrested him for aggravated assault, kidnapping and endangerment to a child. Marr was also arrested and charged with being an accessory to kidnapping.

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his time Reeves took a different approach. One week after Bates’s arrest, on April 24, the Falcons quietly placed his name on the waiver wire. At the time, there were no press releases, formal statements, or explanations from the Falcons’ brass. Nearly ten months later Reeves explained the move in an interview for this book. “We just had to let the players and our fans know that we just weren’t going to put up with that kind of person on our football team,” Reeves said.

For Reeves, it was the first time that he could recall outright releasing someone over a criminal matter. In fact, cutting a player who had yet to be convicted of anything was virtually unheard of in the NFL. In the more than 500 arrest reports reviewed during the research for this book, the authors were able to document only one other player, Tampa Bay’s Lamar Thomas, who was released after only an arrest, and he was signed by another team weeks later (see Chapter 8). In numerous interviews with representatives from teams around the league, the biggest explanation for not releasing players solely on the basis of an arrest was a respect for the player’s due process rights. In other words, it is only fair to let the courts determine guilt or innocence before firing a guy.

Reeves, however, did not take the due process factor into consideration. “I wasn’t worried about that,” Reeves said. “I talked to Patrick and Patrick understood what my stance was. He and I were on the same page. He felt that a change of scenery might be good for him too.”

Through his agent, Steve Zucker, Bates declined a request from the authors to be interviewed about his dismissal from Atlanta. However, Ian Greengross, an attorney in Zucker’s office, confirmed that Bates met with Reeves following the incident and left the team on good terms. However, his explanation for why the Falcons cut Bates loose was considerably different. “They released him a few weeks after the draft,” Greengross explained. “They drafted a couple guys who play his position in the draft. When we talked to the Falcons, our entire conversations with them were based not really on the off-the-field thing, although that was a contributing factor. But it was more of how they saw him in their plans than anything else.”

And there’s the rub. Bates was a second-string player, not even able to maintain a starting position on the Falcons, who went 3-13 in 1996. His absence from the roster would not be missed. “If he had started sixteen games, he wouldn’t have been cut for this incident,” confirmed Greengross. “If you’re a strong starter and a valuable contributor to the team, they’re not going to exercise the full option of cutting you as they can under these nonguaranteed contracts.”

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o, what would Reeves and the Falcons do if a key starter got charged with a violent felony? Not three weeks passed from the time Bates was cut before the Falcons got their chance to decide. On May 19, a Buffalo, New York, woman filed a police complaint after being treated at an area hospital for injuries sustained in a rape the previous night. Her alleged attacker? Falcons starting linebacker Cornelius Bennett, a ten-year veteran who was an All-Pro and who had played in four Super Bowls. A key free agent acquisition in 1996, Bennett was earning $13.6 million over four years.

The report filled out by an investigator from the Buffalo Police Department Sex Crimes Unit identified Bennett’s crimes as “rape, sodomy, sexual abuse and unlawful imprisonment.” Facing serious felony charges in New York, Bennett soon met privately with Reeves in Atlanta. “I sat down and talked to Cornelius,” Reeves confirmed. “He explained to me what his side of the story was. And it was one of those deals where you have to let the law take its course.”

Unlike his position in the Bates case, Reeves chose the “wait and see” approach while prosecutors built their case against Bennett. As it turned out, Bennett pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of sexual misconduct on September 9, 1997. Under New York law, “A person is guilty of sexual misconduct when: 1. Being a male, he engages in sexual intercourse with a female without her consent; or 2. He engages in deviate sexual intercourse with another person without the latter’s consent.”

When Bennett entered his plea of guilty, Bates still had not even been indicted. By legal standards, he was still innocent. That could no longer be said for Bennett. Nonetheless, Reeves opted not to suspend or fine him, much less release him. “I think pleading guilty certainly isn’t what you would like for him to do,” Reeves admitted, speaking from a coach’s perspective. “But sometimes there are circumstances where that is the best way to go. The lawyers make that call. All I did was listen to what Cornelius’s story was and why he did what he did. And I was satisfied with it and didn’t take any action.”

Hours after Bennett’s plea, the press asked Reeves what action, if any, he would take. “We’ll have to wait and see what the judge does,” Reeves said back in September of 1997. “When he makes a decision, then we’ll decide what to do.”

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eeves insisted that the difference in his handling of Bates and Bennett had nothing to do with their importance to the team as players. Instead, he pointed to two more practical factors that influenced his actions: 1) the lack of information available to him in the Bennett case and 2) league policy.

“One big difference in these two situations is that I had access to Patrick’s police reports, but not to Cornelius’s because his happened in Buffalo,” Reeves said in an interview for this book. “I’ve seen police reports and gone through them with the police in other cases. Normally you do that. But since Cornelius’s case was in Buffalo, I didn’t have access to them. So I didn’t pursue it. But I was satisfied with what took place and what Cornelius had told me.”

Of course, the Falcons, like any citizen willing to file a public records request, could have obtained those reports had they wanted to. But beyond that, Reeves said he was told that the league would handle the investigation into Bennett to determine whether punishment was warranted. “A lot of the things that individual teams were able to do in the past we are no longer able to do,” said Reeves, referring to new league policy that places investigative powers for off-the-field matters in the hands of the commissioner’s office. “Now the league takes charge. The league said that they were going to take care of the investigation into Bennett’s arrest, and that they would alert us about anything that they don’t agree with. And they never did that.”

Reeves and the Falcons weren’t the only ones told by the league that they would handle the investigation into the Bennett incident. The public heard the same thing. When Bennett pleaded guilty, NFL spokesperson Greg Aiello told the Associated Press that the league was “in the process of obtaining court documents and looking into it.” When asked if Bennett would face possible sanctions from the league, Aiello said, “I wouldn’t rule it out at this point. In a general sense, any person in the league who’s involved in a violation of the law is subject to possible disciplinary action by the commissioner.”

Emphasis on the word “possible.” In theory, it is possible for any player to be punished by the league for committing a criminal offense. In reality, it doesn’t happen unless the crime involves gambling or substance abuse. When pressed to explain why he didn’t as much as fine Bennett in light of having fired Bates, Reeves told the authors: “The league didn’t see that there was any disciplinary action that should be taken as far as Cornelius’s incident was concerned.”

This leads to the question: Did the league really investigate the crime or did they just placate the press by saying they were
going
to conduct an investigation?

After months of letter writing and telephone calls, the authors obtained the police reports, the police investigation log, the criminal complaint, and the victim’s sworn deposition in the Bennett matter. Due to the sexual nature of the crime, the victim’s name had to be expunged from all the documents before the authors could obtain them. The following account is based on those documents, as well as numerous interviews conducted with law enforcement officials and Judge Robert T. Russell, who presided over the case. The authors also spoke with the victim’s mother on numerous occasions by telephone.

On May 18, 1997, Cornelius Bennett was in Buffalo to attend a social event honoring ex-Bills quarterback Jim Kelly. While in town, Bennett stayed at the Hyatt Hotel located at 2 Fountain Plaza. At 5:30 on the afternoon of the eighteenth, Bennett asked twenty-six-year-old Clarisse Messner* to come to room 1611, which the Hyatt’s hotel register listed as being occupied by Cornelius Bennett. His pregnant wife did not accompany him to Buffalo, choosing instead to remain behind in Atlanta.

Messner was well acquainted with Bennett from his days with the Bills. She first met him when she was sixteen years old. Having known him for ten years, she went willingly to his room. “While there, he asked me to remove my clothes, which I did,” Messner said in her deposition. She was willing to go along with Bennett until what began as another garden-variety case of an athlete cheating on his wife turned painfully violent. “During the course of kissing, Cornelius Bennett did … insert his penis into my rectum,” Messner’s deposition continued. “At no point did I give consent to this type of sexual intercourse.”

The report filed by the police on May 19 charged Bennett with sodomy, a first-degree felony. In New York, sodomy is the technical term for anal rape. The statute defines sodomy as forcing a person to “engage in deviate sexual intercourse,” which New York courts have defined as “ ‘contact’ between the penis and the anus, [or] the mouth and the penis….”

Bennett was also charged with unlawful imprisonment. According to the police report, Messner “was not permitted to leave when she asked to do so.”

The prosecutor’s complaint filed on September 4, 1997, indicated that “the defendant … did subject the victim to deviate sexual intercourse without her consent by inserting his penis into her rectum, causing pain and lacerations.” After Bennett’s lawyer reached a plea agreement with prosecutors, the words “by inserting his penis into her rectum causing pain and lacerations” in the complaint had a line drawn through them. The words may have changed, but that did not erase the fact that Messner had actually suffered injuries from sexual assault that required medical treatment. According to the Sex Crimes Unit’s case log, officers noted on May 19 that the “victim was treated at [name deleted] hospital, following the attack.” On May 21, the log notes that a rape kit was performed, but the details are blotted out in order to protect the victim’s privacy. Finally, when Judge Russell accepted Bennett’s guilty plea, he had to postpone sentencing because all the medical costs—which Bennett was required to pay—had not been assessed yet.

When Bennett was finally sentenced on February 26, he told the press, “This is the first time in my life I’ve ever had to go through anything like this. I just wish I could take back that night altogether.” No doubt the victim had never been through anything like that either. And she probably wouldn’t mind taking back that night as well.

Reading from a letter written by Messner, Judge Russell quoted her belief in Bennett’s “need for a wake-up call.” The judge agreed, giving Bennett sixty days in jail. He also sentenced him to three years’ probation, fined him $500, ordered him to pay restitution to the victim for medical bills, and ordered him to perform 100 hours of community service.

“That sentence is excessive and unduly harsh,” said Bennett’s defense attorney, James M. Shaw, whose brother Joe is Bennett’s agent. “There were over 30 letters of reference and testimonials from religious, sports and community leaders who recommended that Mr. Bennett be put on probation for the exemplary life he had led not only in Western New York but in Atlanta.”

Shaw’s response didn’t exactly qualify as a news bulletin. His job as a defense lawyer is to make excuses for his clients.

The NFL, on the other hand, has no such excuse. Yet the commissioner’s office chose not to so much as fine Bennett.

When the authors contacted the Buffalo Police Department in the winter of 1997 to request copies of the police reports in the Bennett case, no other request had been made for the documents up to that point in time. Lieutenant David Mann of the Sex Crimes Unit, who approves the release of any reports pertaining to sex-related offenses, informed the authors that it would take weeks for the department to go through the reports and expunge protected information such as the victim’s name and address. This suggests that seven months after the police reports were filed, the NFL had not obtained copies of them from the police department. It remains a mystery what Aiello meant when he told the AP back on September 9, 1997, that the league was “obtaining court documents and looking into it.”

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an Reeves, who initially told reporters he would reserve making any disciplinary decisions until after the judge imposed a sentence, followed the NFL’s lead. This despite Judge Russell’s determination that Bennett’s crime was sufficiently serious to send him to jail. “The sentence was fair, reasonable, and justified based on the facts of the case,” Judge Russell said in an interview for this book. “He had admitted his culpability and responsibility for the offense by entering a plea of guilty. Having evaluated the medical records and the impact it had upon the victim and the victim’s family life, the sentence was justified. If someone else committed the same offense, whether it was him or some other citizen who engaged in the same or similar conduct, I would have imposed the same sentence.”