Daily Zoot - 6/19/09 - The Blind Scales of Zoot

The Daily Zoot is all the news you needed to know yesterday, soon

-A few days ago, Cleveland Brown's WR Dante Stallworth reached a plea agreement in his DUI Manslaughter case. A few months ago he was driving down the Miami strip at 7 am and ran over a guy who was waiting for the bus on his home from (even worse) work. At the scene Stallworth blew a .12, well above the legal limit of .08 (like I need to remind you of that). His sentence? 30 days in prison, 2 years of house arrest, and 8 years probation. Mike Vick got almost 2 years for dog fighting, Dante only gets one for killing a human being. Yeah that sounds about right...yikes.

 Now I hate to get into this because god knows Peta is grasping at straws these days and will get up in arms about anything (really Peta? I know there's no such thing as bad publicity but I'd like to think that you would try and attract the good kind, even just once) but shouldn't the death of a person carry some more legal weight than that of a household pet? Why does he even look remotely upset in that picture? He came as close to getting away with murder as you realistically can. 

The story got a little deeper yesterday as Roger Goodell suspended Stallworth from the NFL indefinitely. Kudos to Goodell for punishing Stallworth for longer than our legal system. I've been trying to figure out how somebody can admit and take responsibility for taking another life and still only get 30 days in jail, then this came out. Ah, yes...mone; the cause of and solution to all of life's problems (simpsons). How many years in prison would any non-NFL player get for a fatal car accident comitted while being well above the legal limit? 

The chances that Stallworth makes it back to the NFL and does so with the support of both the league and the fans are minimal. Ray Lewis made it all the way back because he only suffered murder allegations (not that he didn't kill that guy, he probably did, they just couldn't prove it). Stallworth might be able to make a living playing football again, but he likely won't be able to make the same life he did before.