Black Legal Issues

'They use you up': Hall of Famer Dorsett suing NFL

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:03:39 GMT

The helmet-to-helmet shot knocked Tony Dorsett out cold in the second quarter of a 1984 Cowboys-Eagles game, the hardest hit he ever took during his Hall of Fame NFL career.

"It was like a freight train hitting a Volkswagen," Dorsett says now.

"Did they know it was a concussion?" he asks rhetorically during an interview with The Associated Press. "They thought I was half-dead."

And yet, he says, after being examined in the locker room — a light shined in his eyes; queries such as who sat next to him on the Cowboys' bus ride to the stadium — Dorsett returned to the field and gained 99 yards in the second half. Mainly, he says, by running plays the wrong way, because he couldn't remember what he was supposed to do.

"That ain't the first time I was knocked out or been dazed over the course of my career, and now I'm suffering for it," the 57-year-old former tailback says. "And the NFL is trying to deny it."

Dorsett traces several health problems to concussions during a career that lasted from 1977-88, and he has joined more than 300 former players — including three other members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and at least 32 first- or second-team All-Pro selections — in suing the NFL, its teams and, in some cases, helmet maker Riddell. More should have been done in the past to warn about the dangers of concussions, their lawyers argue, and more can be done now and in the future to help retired players deal with mental and physical problems they attribute to their days in the NFL.

In interviews conducted by the AP over the past two months with a dozen plaintiffs, what emerged was, at best, a depiction of a culture of indifference on the part of the league and its teams toward concussions and other injuries. At worst, there was a strong sense of a willful disregard for players' well-being.

"It's not about whether players understood you could get a concussion playing football. It's about the negligence of care, post-concussion, that occurred," says Kyle Turley, an offensive lineman for the Saints, Rams and Chiefs who was the No. 7 overall pick in the 1998 draft and an All-Pro in 2000.

Players complain that they carried owners to their profits, in an industry that now has more than $9 billion in annual revenues, without the safety nets of guaranteed contracts or lifetime medical insurance.

"Yeah, I understand you paid me to do this, but still yet, I put my life on the line for you, I put my health on the line," Dorsett says. "And yet when the time comes, you turn your back on me? That's not right. That's not the American way."

Head injuries are a major topic of conversation every day of the NFL season. With the Super Bowl as a global stage, the NFL will air a one-minute TV commercial during Sunday's game highlighting rules changes through the years that have made the sport safer.

The owners of the teams playing for the Lombardi Trophy in Indianapolis — Bob Kraft of the New England Patriots and John Mara of the New York Giants — acknowledge the issue's significance.

"There's more of a focus on it now, without question, and I think that's a good thing, and I think it'll continue to be a focus. Because none of us want to put players in perilous situations like that," Mara says. "I don't want to see guys that are on this team, 20 years from now, with debilitating injuries, no matter what they are."

Says Kraft: "We know this is a physical game, and when people play the game, they know it comes with certain risks. We have tried to stay ahead of it."

The most accomplished and best-known plaintiff in the flurry of lawsuits — a star for the Cowboys after winning the 1976 Heisman Trophy at Pittsburgh — Dorsett agreed to two interviews with the AP, one over the telephone and one at his suburban Dallas home.

"I don't want to get to the point where it turns into dementia, Alzheimer's. I don't want that," says Dorsett, who ran for 12,739 yards, the eighth-highest total in league history. He is, in that moment, sad and deflated — in others, pumped up and angry, fists flying to punctuate his words. "There's no doubt in my mind that ... what I went through as a football player is taking an effect on me today. There's no ifs ands or buts about that. I'm just hoping and praying I can find a way to cut it off at the pass."

He spreads two pages' worth of brain scans on his coffee table and says doctors told him that red regions in the color-coded scan mean he is not getting enough oxygen in the left lobe of his brain, the part associated with organization and memory. He already forgets people's names or why he walked into a room or where he's heading while driving on the highway, and fears his memory issues are getting worse.

Dorsett's had surgery on both his knees, and problems with his left arm and right wrist. He says then-Cowboys coach Tom Landry once told him he could play despite a broken bone in his back. Not even the flak jacket Dorsett says he wore beneath his jersey could bring relief, the injury so painful that "tears would just start flowing out of my eyes, profusely and uncontrollably" during practices.

"They would see me and just point to the training room. `Go to the training room, get some ice and heat and come on back out here,'" Dorsett says.

And during games?

"They were hitting me, and I'd be squealing like a pig," Dorsett says, imitating the guttural sound. "It was so bad that the other team was telling our coaches, `Get him out of the game.' You know that something's wrong then. And like a fool, I stayed as long as I could. They're going to our sideline, telling our coaches, `Get him out of the game!' ... You know it's bad when the opposition feels sorry for you."

"I try not to take medicine. I don't want to be a zombie," Duper adds. "What little left I've got in my brain, I want to keep it normal."

Dorsett describes making the trek to the annual Hall of Fame induction ceremony and being saddened by once-hearty men deteriorating before his eyes.

"Bodies that were just mangled, just beat up. Twisted up. Hit with arthritis and the knuckles and the bones, the twisted bones. It's `Wow!' It's very enlightening to see that," he says, wincing at the images he describes. "And then when you hear that these guys don't have insurance, that the league won't give them insurance, that the league is saying that it didn't happen on their clock. That's bull."

Citing the pending litigation, NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said the league would not comment on players' specific allegations and referred to a written statement initially released in December: "The NFL has long made player safety a priority and continues to do so. Any allegation that the NFL intentionally sought to mislead players has no merit. It stands in contrast to the league's actions to better protect players and advance the science and medical understanding of the management and treatment of concussions."

Jack Yeo, who works at a public relations firm representing Riddell, said the equipment company does not comment on legal matters.

As public as the plight of current players is, former players say their stories aren't widely known.

"Fans don't know. They have no clue. And you think the NFL is going to tell them? No," says Ronnie Lippett, a Patriots cornerback from 1983-91. "I'm just so happy that the senators and congressmen and congresswomen took notice of how they have been cheating us. And that's the only reason (players are) getting the help that we're getting now. And it's only been in the last two years that anything has started to change."

'They use you up': Hall of Famer Dorsett suing NFL

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:03:10 GMT

Tyrone Duplessis Dead: Louisiana Tech Running Back Dies At 21

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:45:37 GMT

Louisiana Tech running back Tyrone Duplessis has been found dead at his off-campus apartment.

Hazel Woods, the chief investigator for the Lincoln Parish coroner's office, says the cause of death is not yet known and an autopsy is pending.

The 21-year-old Duplessis, whose body was found Thursday morning, recently completed his sophomore season of eligibility. Louisiana Tech spokesman Patrick Walsh says coach Sonny Dykes has informed the team, which was expected to have a meeting later Thursday. The university has also made grief counselors available to the team.

Duplessis, who is from New Orleans, played in two games last season as he sought to come back from a knee injury that sidelined him in 2010. As a true freshman in 2009, he had 70 carries for 277 yards.

Tyrone Duplessis Dead: Louisiana Tech Running Back Dies At 21

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:45:12 GMT

Dallas attorney vies for State Bar of Texas presidency

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:33:51 GMT

The State Bar of Texas Board of Directors has approved the nomination of attorney E. Steve Bolden II of Dallas, along with Lisa Tatum of San Antonio, as candidates for president-elect. Texas attorneys will cast their votes during an election this spring. Election results will be announced May 1. The president-elect will serve as president of the State Bar of Texas from June 2013 until June 2014.

Bolden is a shareholder at Mahomes Bolden PC in Dallas where he focuses on a variety of corporate and securities matters, including mergers and acquisitions of publicly traded and privately held companies, public securities offerings, private equity transactions and bond transactions. Prior to joining Mahomes Bolden, he practiced at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP and Jackson Walker LLP.

Bolden has served on the State Bar of Texas Board of Directors, Nominations and Elections Subcommittee, Policy Manual Subcommittee and chaired the Section Representatives to the Board Committee. He has served on the Dallas Bar Association Board of Directors. He serves on the Business Law Section Council and chaired the African American Lawyers Section. He is a recipient of a J.L. Turner Legal Association Presidential Citation and a Dallas Bar Association Presidential Citation. He served as president of the J.L. Turner Legal Association in 2008 and under his administration the organization received recognition as Region V Affiliate Chapter of the Year.

Pilar Sanders: “Deion Will Only Give Me Money For Sex”

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:09:48 GMT

Pilar Sanders claims Deion Sanders is holding her as a "financial hostage" ... completely severing her cash flow ... and has only offered to give her money in exchange for sex ... this according to new court papers obtained by TMZ.

Pilar has filed an emergency motion in a Texas courtroom ... claiming the NFL legend has canceled her credit cards and left her without any financial means to support herself and their children ... and she needs the judge to force Deion to give her money so she can survive.

In the docs, Pilar claims, "Since [Deion] filed for divorce on December 21, 2011, he has given [Pilar] $300.00 and offered her money in exchange for sexual favors."

She then notes, "Pilar turned down the money."

Pilar is begging the court to force Deion to give her money stat ... claiming "The children and I have lived in survival mode for several months, and the emotional toll on all of us is palpable."

Pilar also claims Deion has canceled her cell phone and has "engaged in a pattern of systematically removing my belongings from the house and haphazardly throwing them into piles in the garage of the residence."

Pilar claims Deion still rakes in more than $1 million per year ... and she NEEDS a cut of his income to survive.

Calls to Deion's reps have not been returned.

Defense lawyer fights racism in death row cases

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:04:23 GMT

There’s a steadfast cheeriness to Christina Swarns as she talks rapid fire about the contours of her day. There are the rigors of her end-to-end Manhattan commute, how rarely she dresses like a grown-up and the usual challenges of the professional working mom.

But that changes when the conversation turns to the role of race in the criminal justice system. Then the Howard University grad becomes all authority and passion. She cites case law, death-penalty statistics and the history of Southern lynchings.She talks without pause, punctuating her words with hand gestures, even as her favorite portobello sandwich goes untouched in front of her.

As director of the criminal justice unit at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Swarns, 43, is one of the most prominent capital-defense lawyers in the country — the rare black woman in a community whose public face is most often white and male. Over the course of her career, she’s gotten seven convicted murderers off death row; one was exonerated, three had their convictions overturned and three had their death sentences vacated. But it is her most recent victory that is by far the most high-profile.

In December prosecutors in Philadelphia declined to seek another death sentence against Mumia Abu-Jamal, a decision that took him off death row for the first time in 30 years and rewarded years of effort Swarns — and many others — had put into the case. In 1982, Abu-Jamal was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer and his decades-long court battles gained him a national and international following. There have been hip-hop tributes, “Free Mumia” T-shirts and a street named for him in France. When it was announced that he would no longer face the death penalty, famed writer Alice Walker wrote him a poem, activist and Princeton University professor Cornel West led a rally at the Philadelphia Constitution Center and the former South African archbishop Desmond Tutu called for his immediate release.

Abu-Jamal is Swarns’s biggest case, and she’s thrilled for the renewed attention it has received. But what she really wants is more scrutiny on an entire system she says is unfair and unjust.

Finding her passion

“Welcome to death row,” Swarns jokes outside her office. Behind her desk, a Halloween picture of her 3-year-old daughter, Amina, whom Swarns adopted as an infant from Ethiopia, shares space with a 1970s picture of a Ku Klux Klansman in full regalia holding a handwritten sign: “We support the Death Penalty.”

Growing up on Staten Island, Swarns never imagined she’d be in this place. Swarns is the middle of three girls (her younger sister, Jessica, is an elementary school teacher in Woodbridge, and her older sister, Rachel, a New York Times reporter). Her father is a real estate broker, her mother an educator who retired as a superintendent for the New York City Department of Education. At her mother’s insistence, during breaks from Howard, Swarns interned at the office of a neighbor who was a prosecutor and decided she hated criminal law.

“I was the only black person in a nonclerical capacity and all the people being prosecuted were black,” she says. It was a mill. “Nobody talked about how on Earth is this happening?”

But the law remained compelling, and at the University of Pennsylvania law school, she dabbled in public service law, worked on an AIDS project and taught at-risk kids at a community center. Nothing stuck. For six months after graduating, she grilled other lawyers about their jobs but remained “overwhelmingly confused.” One day she simply called the Legal Defense Fund to ask if she could volunteer. Absolutely, she was told, and she was immediately sent to the capital-crimes division.

She started on a Monday. A fellow lawyer had a client scheduled to die that week. He got a last-minute stay. Swarns says it was “the first time I felt I saw criminal law in its full capacity and power.” The first time she saw a place for herself.

Swarns gained courtroom experience at the Legal Aid Society in Manhattan and began doing full-time death-penalty work with the capital unit of the Philadelphia Federal Community Defender’s Office in the mid-1990s. In 2003 she was offered the position with the Legal Defense Fund. One of the first things she did was meet with Abu-Jamal. In late 2010, Jamal asked her and the LDF to take his case.

Swarns didn’t know if they could. Her daughter was 2. Her schedule was tight. As a single mom, she had to leave the office by 4:30 and already sometimes felt like a part-timer, rushing back and forth daily from her Washington Heights home to her office in TriBeCa. Dating was nonexistent. She came to terms with all that, then talked to her boss.

“This is that Mumia,” she told him, “with all the followers.”

Abu-Jamal was a former Black Panther, and his 1982 conviction for killing patrolman Daniel Faulkner came during a time of deep racial unrest. The U.S. Department of Justice had just sued the Philadelphia Police Department for federal civil rights violations. In 1978, a police officer had been killed during a raid on the black liberation sect MOVE. During and after the trial, Abu-Jamal supporters alleged the prosecution was corrupt. Prosecutors and Faulkner’s family called him a cop killer.

By the time Swarns took over Abu-Jamal’s case, it was decades old and still politically explosive. But Swarns believed Abu-Jamal was innocent — and moreover that the death penalty is racist. It’s a belief that animates her life and makes it impossible for her to have casual conversations about capital punishment. At the same time, she gets that victims’ families and death-penalty proponents believe just as strongly that the punishment must fit the crime, that convicted killers deserve to be killed.

“I don’t support murder. I don’t want people to be killed; that’s horrible. To a case, a family has lost someone for no good reason in an unnatural way,” she says. “My point is whether this person got what the American justice system guarantees. Is this the right person, and was justice done?”

Don Cornelius Dead Apparent Suicide

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:02:39 GMT

Don Cornelius -- who famously created "Soul Train" was found dead in his Sherman Oaks, CA home this morning ... and law enforcement sources tell us it appears he committed suicide.

We're told cops discovered the body at around 4 AM PT. Law enforcement sources tell us ... Cornelius died from a gunshot wound to the head and officials believe the wound was self-inflicted.

We're told Cornelius was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.

"Soul Train" changed the landscape of television when it debuted in 1971 and ran until 2006.

Officials have notified Don's family.

Cornelius was 75.

During Don's bitter divorce proceedings in 2009, he told an L.A. judge he was suffering from "significant health issues" and wanted to "finalize this divorce before I die."

The divorce was granted later that year.

Story developing...

Don Cornelius Dead Apparent Suicide

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 07:37:33 GMT

Florida A&M band suspends band camp, other clubs

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 07:30:46 GMT

The president of Florida A&M University said the college is canceling its summer band camp program and suspending all clubs as the school continues to deal with the fallout from the suspected hazing death of a marching band student.

"Our top priority is the health, safety and well being of students," said FAMU President James Ammons on Tuesday. "We are convening a panel of experts and outstanding thinkers to provide advice and recommendations on the operation of student organizations. Before we enter into a new student intake process, we should have the benefit of the work coming from the committees and the investigations."

The move comes weeks after four members of the university's fabled Marching 100 band were arrested on hazing-related charges.

Those charges are unrelated to the November hazing death of drum major Robert Champion.

FAMU police arrested three of the students on January 16; the fourth turned himself in the next morning, said Sharon Saunders, the FAMU spokeswoman.

The students -- Hakeem Birch, Brandon Benson, Anthony Mingo and Denise Bailey -- are accused of hazing five Marching 100 band members who wanted to join a group in the clarinet section known as the "Clones."

The five told police they were made to line up according to height at the start of each meeting. Then they were punched, slapped and paddled, according to the arrest warrant.

One of the students, who quit the pledging process after the first meeting, took a digital photo of the bruising on her body.

Champion's death prompted FAMU's board of trustees to approve a three-part plan to tackle the issue of hazing on campus. The plan includes an independent blue-ribbon panel of experts to investigate.

Champion, 26, collapsed in Orlando on a bus carrying members of the band after a November football game that included a halftime performance by the group.

Christopher Chestnut, a lawyer for Champion's family, has charged that Champion died after receiving "some dramatic blows, perhaps (having an) elevated heart rate" tied to "a hazing ritual" that took place on the bus.

Some band members have said Champion died after taking part in a rite of passage called "crossing Bus C." One member, who spoke on condition of anonymity, explained that students "walk from the front of the bus to the back of the bus backward while the bus is full of other band members, and you get beaten until you get to the back."

No one has been charged in Champion's death; the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Orange County Sheriff's Office are investigating the case.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement also launched a separate investigation into band employees, who were allegedly engaged in financial fraud.

The medical examiner's office has said Champion "collapsed and died within an hour of a hazing incident during which he suffered multiple blunt trauma blows to his body."

Ammons said in the Tuesday statement that he suspended the summer band camp because of the ongoing investigation into Champion's death and other band related hazing incidents.

"I totally support this effort," said Breyon Love, president of FAMU Student Government Association. "This issue of hazing has had a far-reaching impact on the university and I believe that we need to pause for a moment to make sure that all of our students are ready to seriously move in a direction which will result in a complete culture change."