A few hours after the murders, at about 6 a. A jailhouse informant, meanwhile, told cops that Lewis was using one of his sisters to relay messages to Sweeting, telling him not to worry, that Lewis would never betray him. Lewis himself felt he had little to worry about. The Ravens were standing firmly behind him. His driver, Fassett, became increasingly unsure of what went down that night.
The trial began on May 15, , and quickly fell apart. He sat at the defense table and scrawled his autograph over and over. Here, too, the prosecution miscalculated. On June 13, , the jury acquitted both men on charges of murder and assault. They spent just five hours deliberating. He settled them out of court, with confidentiality agreements attached to both. Because nothing is going to stop his career. Lewis will be eligible for the Hall of Fame in five years and is considered a lock.
Ray Lewis was an eventual witness in a murder case. The murder charges stemmed from a vicious fight in Atlanta streets following a Super Bowl Party in Eventually, the case ended with the defendants acquitted for reasons of self defense. In the eyes of the court, no murder took place. Ray Lewis' friends went to jail to protect him. This is in a lot of blogs and opinion pieces. It's just not true.
No one in this case went to jail. Ray Lewis refused to testify against his friends in the murder trial. It's the opposite. Ray Lewis started the trial at the table with Oakley and Sweeting. In the end, however, both Oakley and Sweeting were acquitted of murder charges.
There simply was not enough clear evidence about their involvement, especially since well over a dozen people had been involved in the brawl. Several years later, Lewis reached out-of-court settlements with the families of both stabbing victims. Amazing weekend spent among greatness.
In the eyes of the law, justice was served in the case and Lewis and his friends were officially declared innocent of murder. Many people even feel that the true facts of the case were never fully explained. One detail, in particular, comes up time and time again: the suit Lewis was wearing at the time of the murder. Simply put, the suit went suspiciously missing shortly after the night in question.
Presumably Lewis destroyed the suit, perhaps at the behest of his lawyers. The rows behind the prosecution were filled with media and relatives of the victims; supporters of the defendants sat behind their table on the left side of the courtroom.
The balance of the seats were often filled with retirees, people on vacation, a few stray homeless people and lawyers occasionally darting in and out of the courtroom to catch a glimpse of the defense team at work. Lewis, sitting between Samuel and Garland, appeared to be taking copious notes on a yellow legal pad; he was actually doodling and practicing his autograph.
The first courtroom bombshell was the arrival on the opening day of the trial of the district attorney to prosecute the case. Howard says he decided to handle it personally because the evidence was complicated and a celebrity defendant raised the stakes. Plus, they had so many lawyers; it was nine against two when I joined. It was, the defense lawyers agree, a decision that quickly backfired. It takes time to get comfortable in court.
He promised jurors that a trail of blood would lead directly to Lewis and mark him as a murderer. He promised to prove Lewis kicked and punched the victims. He promised to prove that Oakley fought with Baker and that Sweeting fought with Lollar, and that they stabbed them to death.
By the end of the trial, all these promises would prove empty. The prosecution stumbled off the starting blocks. They presented two store employees who saw Sweeting purchase three knives at an autograph session Lewis held before the Super Bowl at the Sports Authority at GwinnettPlace Mall. Not content to leave it at that, they also called a friend of Lewis who was in the store and witnessed the purchase.
There was just one problem: The friend was the object of what he considered a racially disparaging comment uttered by Atlanta Police Homicide Lieutenant Mike Smith. The man had abruptly ended his interview with Smith and stormed out of the police department. The lead detective in the investigation, Ken Allen, was sufficiently offended to not only follow the witness outside and apologize, but to include the incident in his investigative report. The snafu was obvious: In front of a jury that included 10 blacks, Howard had just introduced evidence that the supervisor of the investigation was a racist.
The two members of the OH group each described an altercation with Oakley outside the Cobalt Lounge. Gwen said he was upset that night because his ride had left him behind.
Both Gwen and Shinholster agreed the man with the knife was not one of the defendants. Gwen said the man was clad in black leather pants and a jacket and a derby. Shinholster said the man with the knife was clad in a black mink coat. That description matched someone else with the Lewis party, Carlos Stafford, a law student from Houston. He saw Oakley punching the other victim, Baker, in the stomach.
Then the man with the knife began chasing Gwen, who turned and ran for his life. The defense was lying in wait on cross-examination. They knew that Gwen had originally given authorities a written statement saying he saw Lewis punch Lollar. They also knew that he had told prosecutors a few weeks later that he was mistaken and actually saw only Lewis wrestling with Lollar.
The defense discovered the contradiction only when they interviewed him themselves in Ohio. Sadow was flabbergasted by the strategy.
Step by step, he led Gwen through the chronology. How they had asked him to read a copy of his initial statement to police. Sadow was standing at the podium between the prosecution and defense tables, barely two feet away from Paul Howard. He made a dramatic turn, first glancing at the jury and then looking down at the prosecutors. Silence hung in the courtroom while prosecutors sat stunned, crestfallen. Finally, Rucker rose to make a meek defense: He acknowledged that Gwen told him there was a mistake in his statement but remembered nothing underlined.
The point was hammered home: One of the few witnesses who claimed to have seen Lewis throw a punch had recanted that testimony, and the prosecution never told the defense. Superior Court Judge Alice D. Bonner was obviously angered by the omission. She scheduled a meeting with the lawyers in her chambers the following morning. When they gathered at a. According to Sadow, almost as soon as the judge began speaking, Howard interrupted her.
Bonner cut him off and said she would give him the opportunity to say something when she finished. As she began to speak, Howard again interrupted the judge; she again told him he could speak when she was finished. When Howard interrupted her a third time, Bonner called an abrupt end to the session and ordered everyone out of her chambers. Howard says he did the right thing. I took that one. The driver implicated Sweeting and Oakley, too, saying he saw them fight and then heard them confess to the stabbings once they got back in the limo.
When Fassett took the witness stand on May 25, he looked sad and sallow and utterly frightened. No one else had seen Lewis throw a punch.
No one else could link Sweeting and Oakley to the stabbings. Fassett was carrying the weight of the entire prosecution on his frail shoulders. And the prosecution was totally unaware that he was about to betray them. His wife was there, his lawyer.
What happened [at the trial] was very much a surprise to us. He also saw Sweeting involved in two different fights. Beyond that, he saw absolutely nothing.
And he heard absolutely nothing. Certainly no confession from Oakley and Sweeting. Howard now found himself boxed into a corner. Samuel blocked him by pointing out that Georgia law requires prosecutors to confront a witness with any inconsistent statements and give them the chance to explain. Fassett was gone. Gwen was gone. Howard was left with just one witness who had seen Lewis strike the victims. And he was a professional con artist named Chester Anderson who was destroyed on the witness stand by a searing cross-examination from Garland.
It came into focus that the prosecution had to rely on unreliable evidence. Sadow agrees that it was a turning point, but for different reasons. The cross-examination was Ed Garland at his absolute best. But I believe Ed never stopped worrying about Chester Anderson, whether the jury might somehow believe him. Which is why we wound up with Ray Lewis taking a plea. Sadow was at home, ready for bed. It was a reporter from the Baltimore Sun.
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