JOHNSON: CHARGING CU PLAYERS WITH FELONIES WAS MISGUIDED

So the question arrived, as I suppose was inevitable. "Do you think those
four Colorado football players were charged with a felony because they are
black?"

The answer is quite simple: I don't know.

Perhaps in a different time, maybe in another region of this country, the
answer would be obvious. I give people the benefit of the doubt, figuring
they just can't be that stupid.

Yet, I do understand those who insist that forgoing misdemeanor charges
against the four young men charged in the aftermath of the Dec. 7 booze,
marijuana and group sex party -- at which a young woman claimed she was
raped -- was strictly race-based.

It has been a high-profile, extremely seedy case. And the only people
charged in connection with it are black. So it does make sense the Rev.
Gill Ford, regional director of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, would quite rationally assert:

"To simply say we're going to take four out of 40 or 50 people (at the
party) and charge them and not charge anyone else, that's absurd."

If you ask whether the case was overcharged, the answer would be yes.

The yes is based on a brief review of CU football players arrested recently
on alcohol-related charges. Not a single one was charged with a felony. You
could look it up.

The four current players, all 20 years old -- Corey Alexander, Marques
Harris, Allen Mackey and Ron Monteihl -- are charged with a felony for
contributing to the delinquency of a minor. They allegedly provided high
school football recruits with alcohol at the Dec. 7 party. Monteihl also is
charged with another felony for distribution of marijuana.

Otherwise, the most recent CU football-related case involved sophomore
defensive lineman Matt McChesney. He was cited last December for alcohol
consumption and criminal mischief at a CU dormitory.

According to police, everyone in the room, including two other CU players
- -- all underage -- was drinking and busted up the room. No one was charged
with a felony.

You may, too, remember the March 2001 case of CU player Ryan Gray. He's the
kid who broke down the door to an Arapahoe Avenue apartment and slept on a
couch as the bewildered homeowner screamed at him to get out. The 285-pound
lineman was arrested after he fled on a bicycle, and was tracked down by
police dogs. He told police he remembered nothing, admitting only he "was
really drunk." He later pleaded guilty two counts of criminal mischief,
misdemeanors.

No, the filing of felony charges against the four players simply is part of
the strange and addled thinking that too often occurs in Boulder.

District Attorney Mary Keenan and Joe Pelle, commander of detectives for
Boulder police, say there were other factors in filing felony charges: The
four players took the recruits to a party where a rape may have occurred,
that they may have driven under the influence and they may have been
involved in theft of cash and cell phones at the party.

Yet no such allegations have been made against the four.

So I'm with the Rev. Ford and the young men's attorneys here: If such
things occurred, and they took part, charge them with it.

To enhance a charge to a felony because someone else in the room might have
done something horribly wrong is simply illogical. It is unfair and as a
big a sin as doing it solely because of their race.