Look at the Facts: Stallworth, Vick Cases Radically Different

Michael Vick and Donte' Stallworth have a lot of things in common. They are professional football players. They stand six feet tall. They are 28. They are black. They are in trouble with the law.

There the comparison ends, or at least it should.

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But ignorance and illiteracy are not against the law in our country and, even worse, appear to be on the rise. To be sure, there are many people among us, like Washington Wizards center Brendan Haywood, who think that the trouble Vick and Stallworth got themselves into with the law is somehow similar and, therefore, the resolutions to their troubles should be too. As Haywood commented Wednesday on his blog at Yardbarker.com, echoing not only lots of folks on the street and people with blog accounts, but even some supposedly learned interpreters of current affairs (i.e. journalists): "So let me get this straight, Michael Vick gets two years in jail for killing dogs and Stallworth gets only 30 days for killing someone? Now they say that justice is blind, but even Stevie Wonder can see that more than 30 days in jail was needed here. I think this was a terrible injustice."

That line of thinking is woefully misinformed.

For starters, Michael Vick – the absolutely wrong cause célèbre in the black community, or any community, for a racially prejudiced justice system – didn't just get out of prison after 23 months for killing dogs. (For those so concerned about racial injustice or any injustice in the justice system, drop a dime on The Innocence Project, or the Center for Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University Law School, or other like organizations that work to correct real miscarriages of justice.) As the black hip-hop poet Bomani Armah satirically encouraged his community in what became a controversial rap a couple of years ago: "Read a Book!"

Or in Vick's case, read the indictment and conviction.

Vick was sent to the hoosegow for operating a dog-fighting operation, and doing so across state lines. He violated a federal law that was punishable as a felony. The fact that dogs were killed along the way – which Humane Society CEO Wayne Pacelle reminded me just a month ago that Vick admitted to doing – was just a particularly gory inhumane detail.

Stallworth on Tuesday began serving a 30-day jail sentence for killing a pedestrian while driving drunk in Miami.

"The reality is they're [the two cases] apples and oranges," Alex Levay, a top Virginia criminal lawyer, told me on Thursday. "One is an accident [Stallworth] and the other [Vick] is a conscious decision to engage in an illegal act."

But many of us in the black community are so beaten down psychologically that we think these two cases are evidence that the system was out to get Michael Vick because it gave someone who killed another human being a much lesser sentence than someone who was convicted of inhumane treatment of canines. Please explain that to former Dallas Cowboys cornerback Dwayne Goodrich. He is black and this year will celebrate being at the halfway point of a 12 ½-year sentence for an after-the-show-its-the-after-party hit-and-run accident that killed two people.


It was a horrific thing, as I wrote months ago, that happened to Mario Reyes, the 59-year-old laborer Stallworth struck with his black Bentley while driving drunk in the wee hours of March 14. Stallworth didn't own up to it immediately but, unlike Vick, didn't attempt to mislead investigators. He pled guilty and reached a confidential financial settlement with Reyes' family that led to his apparently light sentence for an error in judgment that will haunt him the rest of his life.

Levay pointed out to me that any prosecutor worth his salt queries the victim or victims for their opinion about the case in which they find themselves.

The Associated Press reported that Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle cited Stallworth's lack of a previous criminal record, cooperation and willingness to accept responsibility as factors in the plea deal that followed the financial statement and resulted in a month-long sentence. The AP reported that Rundle said the Reyes family -- particularly the victim's 15-year-old daughter -- wanted the case resolved to avoid any more pain.

"For all of these reasons, a just resolution of this case has been reached," Rundle told the AP.

Levay told me that part of Stallworth's restitution in this case can be seen in the terms of the settlement, whatever they may be. After all, many South Florida media outlets described Reyes as the breadwinner for his family.

It was also reported that Reyes may not have been in a crosswalk when Stallworth struck him. That is known in the law as "contributing negligence," and in some states, like Virginia, Levay told me, such a finding voids a financial settlement. That won't be the case for Reyes' family.

"The state can consider these circumstances," Dallas Criminal Court Judge John Creuzot reminded me Thursday. "It's not surprising at all in this deal. When you're in a situation where someone can make financial compensation...that can be part of the equation."

It is trite to say that his family can't bring him back, but in Stallworth the family can replace solace from income that their lost patriarch provided. They may not have been able to do so with Stallworth locked away for years and unable to draw an NFL paycheck. As it is, no one knows when he'll be able to make up that part of his punishment because NFL boss Roger Goodell on Thursday suspended Stallworth, and rightfully so, indefinitely.

A similar decision from the commissioner could still befall Vick, and if it does that will be yet another thing he and Stallworth have in common.

Their cases, however, will forever remain dissimilar. This isn't about dogs versus humans; it's about fact versus foolishness.

Kevin B. Blackistone is a panelist on ESPN's Around the Horn and the Shirley Povich Chair in Sports Journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. A former award-winning sports columnist for The Dallas Morning News, he lives in Silver Spring, Md.