Legal Commentary

Plaxico Burress Pleads Guilty, Agrees to Two Year Sentence

By Jeralyn

Former NY Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress pleaded guilty today to attempted possession and agreed to a two year sentence, of which he will serve 20 months. He is expected to begin serving the sentence on September 20, when he is offiically sentenced. His lawyer, Ben Brafman, said:

"This is a sad day because I think a very good man who is a brilliant athlete is going to unfortunately spend 20 months in prison when he had no intent to violate the law," Brafman said. "I give Plaxico a great deal of credit for accepting responsibility, recognizing that he had to accept responsibility. It was a hard decision in a case like this because as all of you know, the facts in this case have never been in dispute from day one. This is a perfect example in many ways of bad judgment sometimes has very terrible consequences, consequences far more severe than may be justified, in my view.

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"... We tried for eight months to get a plea to less than two years, without success. If he went to trial and were convicted, he would face a significantly greater prison sentence.... After an agonizing period of discussion, Plaxico decided that he wanted to do this, put this behind him as quickly as possible in the hope that when he is released, he will be able to resume his stellar professional football career."

Brafman also explained today why he had Burress testify before the grand jury -- he was hoping for empathy, particularly with respect to the mandatory minimum sentencing law -- because the facts were so against him:

"We tried our best to negotiate a better plea," Brafman said during his news conference. "We tried our best to convince the grand jury to have compassion. There were not facts that we could argue in this case. The gun was recovered. It was his gun. It was registered in his name. It was turned over by him to the police. The Giants were alerted within minutes after the incident happened that Plaxico shot himself. This was never a who-done-it. There were never disputed facts. This was a question of trying to find a way out of this horrible legal predicament with the least amount of punishment possible, and this is unfortunately where it ended."

Burress was between a rock and a hard place. If convicted, he faced a minimum sentence of 3 1/2 years and a maximum of 15 years.

"This is a sad day because I think a very good man who is a brilliant athlete is going to unfortunately spend 20 months in prison when he had no intent to violate the law," Brafman said. "I give Plaxico a great deal of credit for accepting responsibility, recognizing that he had to accept responsibility. It was a hard decision in a case like this because as all of you know, the facts in this case have never been in dispute from day one. This is a perfect example in many ways of bad judgment sometimes has very terrible consequences, consequences far more severe than may be justified, in my view.

...Brafman said of the mandatory minimum 3-1/2-year jail term that Burress was facing if convicted of the original weapons charges: "Taking away discretion from the courts, sometimes this statute creates a far more serious sentence than the circumstances of the particular case really call for."

New York's law is a bad one. It provides for a mandatory minimum sentence even if the defendant did not have the intent to injure anyone. We need to allow judges discretion in sentencing, based on the particular facts and circumstances of each case and the history and characteristics of each individual offender. One size fits all justice is no justice at all.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on August 20, 2009 (boomark / email).