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| Plaxico Burress is Going to Prison |
| By sportingnews.com |
| Published: 08/04/2009 |
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Plaxico Burress is going to prison Mike Florio Aug. 3, 2009 Now that the Hail Mary pass from lawyer Benjamin Brafman to receiver Plaxico Burress has been, as expected, easily intercepted by Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau, Brafman needs to come up with a new plan for trial. "Hail mary, take two. On, um, two." Brafman opted to follow the unorthodox plan of allowing his client to waive his Fifth Amendment rights and testify before a grand jury because Brafman knows in his heart that, barring a plea bargain, his client is destined to spend 42 months in prison. So Brafman was hoping for grand jurors who would be willing to ignore their oath to apply the law to the facts as presented to them, and not indict Burress on the pending charges. At trial, Brafman will be wishing for the outcome that he didn't get before the grand jury. It's not impossible. (See Simpson, O.J.) But hoping for jurors who'll reject the law and the facts and supply their own judgment isn't the best way to secure any "Lawyer of the Year" plaques. Then again, what alternative does Brafman have? His client reportedly has refused any guilty plea that entails prison time, and so his client must face a situation in which a conviction equals a mandatory minimum term of three-and-a-half years. But there's no apparent Matlock moment in this one. No glove that doesn't fit over subtly expanded fingers. No surprise witness who'll claim that the gun was secretly his, and that Burress simply put on the wrong pair of sweatpants. And yet Brafman will continue to peddle his talking points based on "mitigating circumstances." Burress is the only victim in this case, Brafman says. Burress thought that his license to carry the gun in Florida transferred to New York, Brafman reasons. Burress had no intent to violate the law, Brafman insists. None of it matters. Section 265.03(3) of the New York Penal Law prohibits possession of a loaded and unlicensed weapon outside of a person's home or business. Period. It doesn't matter if the gun fired a bullet into the defendant's leg. It doesn't matter if the defendant assumed (ass, you, me) his license from another state would apply in New York. And it doesn't matter that the defendant did not intend to break the law. The moment Burress entered Manhattan from New Jersey with a loaded and unlicensed gun, Burress was committing a felony. If Plaxico hadn't accidentally blown two holes through his leg (one going in, one coming out), he might have gotten away with it. The law provides New York prosecutors with considerable discretion when it comes to striking a plea bargain. If he chooses, Morgenthau can resolve the case under a lesser charge, which doesn't require a mandatory prison stay of three-and-a-half years. But Brafman miscalculated Morgenthau's willingness to give the Giants' Super Bowl hero a sweetheart deal. It didn't help Burress's situation that his apparent refusal to work out a deal eventually caused the Giants to make him a former member of the hometown team. It also didn't help that public pressure mounted in mid-June, after a clear perception arose that prosecutors were delaying the litigation in order to let Burress play in 2009. And it definitely didn't help that Brafman has opted for stridence at a time when he has no leverage. Read More. |
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