Donte' Stallworth Articles Are Getting Ridiculous

There's been plenty of discussion and articles lately on bleacherreport and elsewhere in regards to the punishment that was handed down for Donte' Stallworth who plead guilty to DUI Manslaughter.

The charges come from an accident involving Stallworth and 59 year-old Mario Reyes. Stallworth had been out drinking that night and was driving drunk. He had a blood alcohol level of .126 which of course is over the legal limit of .08.

Reyes was in a hurry to catch his bus after he had just clocked out from work, which meant it was around 7 A.M. Reyes was crossing a causeway between Miami and Miami Beach.

The speed limit on this stretch is 40 miles per hour. Stallworth though was going around 50 miles per hour at the time of the accident.

So, here's the facts of what happened—Reyes was jaywalking trying to cross the causeway to get to his bus stop, and Stallworth was going around 50 miles per hour while he was driving drunk.

From articles describing the accident, Stallworth tried honking his horn and flashing his lights at Reyes, but there was too little time for Reyes to get out of the way and Stallworth hit Reyes with his Bentley.

Stallworth immediately stopped, called 911, and explained what happened. Reyes died on his way to the hospital.

During this time, Stallworth cooperated with the police, took the routine tests that are standard procedures, and admitted to what had happened, taking full responsibility for what had happened.

Also, after Stallworth plead guilty to the charge, the NFL suspended Stallworth indefinitely without pay.

Yet, this accident was avoidable. If Reyes wasn't jaywalking Stallworth would have never hit him. What makes it even harder, there's no guarantee even if Stallworth hadn't been drinking that he would have been able to avoid hitting Reyes.

There's only one factor in the two illegal activities and that was Reyes. If he hadn't been in the causeway, Stallworth would have never hit him.

Stallworth was able to make a plea deal, and he got 30 days in jail, two years of house arrest, eight years of probation, 1,000 hours community service, and a lifetime suspension of his license (only after five years can he get special circumstances to be able to drive, such as going to work), and a financial settlement with the Reyes's family.

Both sides agreed on this and were happy with the outcome. One of the reasons why is that the family wanted it to be over as quickly as possible, the second reason was because of the lack of a criminal history of Stallworth, and lastly and most importantly is that Stallworth remained at the scene and took accountability for his actions and accepted the consequences that were associated with what Stallworth had done.

Sean Crowe, though, would have you believing that Stallworth is a murderer. In Crowe's article titled "Roger Goodell Should End Donte Stallworth's NFL Career, Crowe is quoted as saying "Mario Reyes was guilty of nothing more than trying to walk home from work."

Yet, Crowe pointedly ignores the fact that Reyes was doing something illegal himself. He was jaywalking—while jaywalking isn't as bad as driving drunk, there is and always will be a reason why it is illegal. This tragic event that took the life of Reyes is a perfect example of why.

Reyes was in a hurry to get out of work and catch his bus. Instead of going to a crosswalk and waiting for it to say "walk", he decided to tempt fate and unfortunately for Reyes, it didn't end well for him. 

Then in the article it tries to state that a dog's life is more important than a human life, which couldn't be further from the truth. The only reason why Crowe even mentions dogs is because of Michael Vick who got suspended by the NFL and was put in jail for two and a half years.

He may have had a valid point at having NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell suspend Stallworth and make an example out of Stallworth, but by comparing the two cases it just cannot be done. 

There were more issues than just the dogs being killed. There was the fact that Vick held the fights at his residence, he financed the whole operation, and then he attempted to cover it up and lie about what was going on there.

Stallworth didn't purposefully run over Reyes, and Stallworth never lied about what happened, and like mentioned before, he took accountability and accepted the punishment that was handed down to him.

There's a huge difference between Stallworth purposefully running down someone and driving away. Then you could make a murder case; but that is not what happened.

Don't get me wrong—I'm not saying that Stallworth is a saint, and that he didn't deserve to be punished. He has been punished and I believe it was a fair punishment that was handed down to him.

Each side in the case was happy with the outcome. Part of it was because of what I mentioned before that Stallworth has had no criminal history before, and the other part of that was the Reyes family themselves wanted to get it over as quickly as possible.