Representing Athletes in Trouble

Speaking recently on a sports law panel at the annual Georgia Bar Media and Judiciary Conference, Atlanta lawyer David Cronwall, who represents sports stars in trouble, gave a first-hand account of an attorney's balancing act between helping a client avoid prison and salvaging the athlete's career.

Cornwell said he was in Hawaii in March 2009 when his cellphone rang early one morning. On the line was Dont' Stallworth, then a wide receiver with the Cleveland Browns, sitting in the back of a Miami Beach police car.

“DC, I think I killed a man,” Cornwell recalled his client saying. Cornwell explained that Stallworth had been driving under the influence of alcohol and had fatally hit a pedestrian.

What followed was “a tug of war” among a crisis manager, family members, lawyers and Stallworth ' with the National Football League “hovering over their heads,” said Cornwell.

Early in the crisis, Cornwell said he made a deal with the NFL that Stallworth would not go to the Browns' facility if the league held off on announcing a punishment. “If the league felt like they were getting bad PR, they were going to suspend him,” said Cornwell, who recently moved from the Atlanta office of Gordon & Rees to Barnes & Thornburg.

Over the course of two months, Cornwell said, the Stallworth team negotiated a settlement of potential civil claims with the family of the man who died, 59-year-old Mario Reyes. “We no longer had a complaining witness,” said Cornwell. “Consequently, the government could go to trial without a witness, or they could do a deal with us.”

“We knew that the government could not know that we did a deal with the family,” Cornwell added, explaining that Stallworth's legal team believed Katharine Fernandez Rundle, the state attorney in Miami, would reject a plea deal “if it was reported basically that we bought the case.”

When a reporter asked Cornwell to confirm that Stallworth had paid the family to settle civil claims, Cornwell said he denied it: “For the first time in my career, I lied to the media.”

Stallworth faced 10 years in prison if he were prosecuted to the full extent of the law, said Cornwell. Instead, Stallworth received a sentence of 30 days in a county jail after pleading guilty to DUI manslaughter. “Ten years versus 30 days was worth lying to the media,” Cornwell claimed. “But you don't generally lie to the media.”

(Despite Cornwell's efforts at secrecy, news accounts show that the deal with the family was widely reported at the time of the plea bargain. Fernandez Rundle, the prosecutor, was quoted as saying Stallworth's punishment was appropriate, citing his cooperation with law enforcement and his willingness to accept complete responsibility for his actions. Facing a re-election opponent criticizing the Stallworth deal in 2012, the Miami prosecutor defended it, according to The Miami Herald. “In reality, she said, the case was not an easy one to win because the pedestrian was not in the crosswalk and his family wanted to avoid a trial that would have replayed video surveillance of the accident,” the newspaper reported.)

Stallworth was suspended the entire 2009 season, but he played three more seasons in the NFL. A Sports Illustrated article said he lost all that he had earned as a player in settling the case ' and he has spoken to NFL rookies about his experience to warn them of potential consequences of drunken driving.

Leagues Can Do More

Another member of the Georgia Bar Media and Judiciary Conference panel, former Atlanta Falcon and Atlanta Brave Brian Jordan, said he wants the leagues to provide more counseling to young players to help them avoid legal trouble. “The lawyers, of course, can give you a serious background on consequences. I think these players need to hear that,” he said.

Jordan, now a baseball analyst for Fox Sports South, noted how differently players in the NFL and Major League Baseball are treated by the leagues' respective commissioners. In baseball, he said, the commissioner has to use committees to manage player relations during a sprawling 162-game season, plus spring training and the playoffs. “In the NFL, Roger Goodell has all the power, and to me, that's unfair,” Jordan said.

Cornwell, who in 2009 lost a bid to become the executive director of the NFL players' union, said Goodell lacks the checks and balances that existed in the 1990s and early 2000s ' when the late Gene Upshaw, the longtime players' representative, was a “counterweight” to then-NFL chief Paul Tagliabue.

D. Orlando Ledbetter ' another member of the Georgia Bar panel who covers the Falcons for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution but was trained as a lawyer and is a member of the Wisconsin bar ' said an athlete's legal troubles become news for a sports reporter when they threaten to force the player off the field of play. At the Journal-Constitution, Ledbetter used his legal training to cover the dogfighting charges against Falcons quarterback Michael Vick.

The Georgia Bar panel was led by Ron Thomas, a former sports reporter who is the director of the Journalism and Sports Program at Morehouse College.

Jonathan Ringel, a co-moderator of the panel, is the Managing Editor of the Daily Report, the Alanta-based ALM sibling of Entertainment Law & Finance.

Speaking recently on a sports law panel at the annual Georgia Bar Media and Judiciary Conference, Atlanta lawyer David Cronwall, who represents sports stars in trouble, gave a first-hand account of an attorney's balancing act between helping a client avoid prison and salvaging the athlete's career.

Cornwell said he was in Hawaii in March 2009 when his cellphone rang early one morning. On the line was Dont' Stallworth, then a wide receiver with the Cleveland Browns, sitting in the back of a Miami Beach police car.

“DC, I think I killed a man,” Cornwell recalled his client saying. Cornwell explained that Stallworth had been driving under the influence of alcohol and had fatally hit a pedestrian.

What followed was “a tug of war” among a crisis manager, family members, lawyers and Stallworth ' with the National Football League “hovering over their heads,” said Cornwell.

Early in the crisis, Cornwell said he made a deal with the NFL that Stallworth would not go to the Browns' facility if the league held off on announcing a punishment. “If the league felt like they were getting bad PR, they were going to suspend him,” said Cornwell, who recently moved from the Atlanta office of Gordon & Rees to Barnes & Thornburg.

Over the course of two months, Cornwell said, the Stallworth team negotiated a settlement of potential civil claims with the family of the man who died, 59-year-old Mario Reyes. “We no longer had a complaining witness,” said Cornwell. “Consequently, the government could go to trial without a witness, or they could do a deal with us.”

“We knew that the government could not know that we did a deal with the family,” Cornwell added, explaining that Stallworth's legal team believed Katharine Fernandez Rundle, the state attorney in Miami, would reject a plea deal “if it was reported basically that we bought the case.”

When a reporter asked Cornwell to confirm that Stallworth had paid the family to settle civil claims, Cornwell said he denied it: “For the first time in my career, I lied to the media.”

Stallworth faced 10 years in prison if he were prosecuted to the full extent of the law, said Cornwell. Instead, Stallworth received a sentence of 30 days in a county jail after pleading guilty to DUI manslaughter. “Ten years versus 30 days was worth lying to the media,” Cornwell claimed. “But you don't generally lie to the media.”

(Despite Cornwell's efforts at secrecy, news accounts show that the deal with the family was widely reported at the time of the plea bargain. Fernandez Rundle, the prosecutor, was quoted as saying Stallworth's punishment was appropriate, citing his cooperation with law enforcement and his willingness to accept complete responsibility for his actions. Facing a re-election opponent criticizing the Stallworth deal in 2012, the Miami prosecutor defended it, according to The Miami Herald. “In reality, she said, the case was not an easy one to win because the pedestrian was not in the crosswalk and his family wanted to avoid a trial that would have replayed video surveillance of the accident,” the newspaper reported.)

Stallworth was suspended the entire 2009 season, but he played three more seasons in the NFL. A Sports Illustrated article said he lost all that he had earned as a player in settling the case ' and he has spoken to NFL rookies about his experience to warn them of potential consequences of drunken driving.

Leagues Can Do More

Another member of the Georgia Bar Media and Judiciary Conference panel, former Atlanta Falcon and Atlanta Brave Brian Jordan, said he wants the leagues to provide more counseling to young players to help them avoid legal trouble. “The lawyers, of course, can give you a serious background on consequences. I think these players need to hear that,” he said.

Jordan, now a baseball analyst for Fox Sports South, noted how differently players in the NFL and Major League Baseball are treated by the leagues' respective commissioners. In baseball, he said, the commissioner has to use committees to manage player relations during a sprawling 162-game season, plus spring training and the playoffs. “In the NFL, Roger Goodell has all the power, and to me, that's unfair,” Jordan said.

Cornwell, who in 2009 lost a bid to become the executive director of the NFL players' union, said Goodell lacks the checks and balances that existed in the 1990s and early 2000s ' when the late Gene Upshaw, the longtime players' representative, was a “counterweight” to then-NFL chief Paul Tagliabue.

D. Orlando Ledbetter ' another member of the Georgia Bar panel who covers the Falcons for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution but was trained as a lawyer and is a member of the Wisconsin bar ' said an athlete's legal troubles become news for a sports reporter when they threaten to force the player off the field of play. At the Journal-Constitution, Ledbetter used his legal training to cover the dogfighting charges against Falcons quarterback Michael Vick.

The Georgia Bar panel was led by Ron Thomas, a former sports reporter who is the director of the Journalism and Sports Program at Morehouse College.

Jonathan Ringel, a co-moderator of the panel, is the Managing Editor of the Daily Report, the Alanta-based ALM sibling of Entertainment Law & Finance.