Case dropped against trespassing athlete at BC
By adamg - 3/5/09 - 5:33 pm
Since it's kind of hard to threaten a pro athlete with trespassing when it turns out he was on campus at the invitation of the school basketball coach.
Comments
Skinner had expressly
Looks like you've got your subject heading wrong. A personal invitation does not trump a legal order - requested by the school, presumably.
yea its too bad
the DA didnt simply agree to a CWOF so that BC still has the right to issue no tresspass orders regardless who invites him there.
Dropping the charge was the right thing to do
The defendant could reasonably have claimed entrapment as a defense if the prosecution had proceeded to trial.
I didn't read the report
but I don't think entrapment could have been a defense unless Williams was told that the trespass order was no good and pushed to break the law.
I have always seen this law as clear enough that when you get served a no trespass order, you have a legal obligation to follow that order no matter what.
If you have a no trespass order for 100 main street, but the resident tells you that its ok to come in because they live there, it is no excuse if the order is still in effect.
this just seems like another "justice won't be served" by wasting tax money prosecuting a small case that would probably take a while.
Im going to say that justice probably wasn't served on this one.
wrong.
The defendant could reasonably have claimed entrapment as a defense if the prosecution had proceeded to trial.
No, because entrapment here in the US is the act of a LEO enticing you to break the law. Second, entrapment decisions often involve whether the subject was predisposed- and in this case, it's pretty damn obvious, because he was violating a specific, personal order!
He should have said "I'm sorry, I can't attend- there is a no-trespassing order against me at your college", or if he was too embarrassed, simply not shown up.
Williams got the trespass
Williams got the trespass order from a BCPD officer after an incident on the campus -- it wasn't something requested by the school so much as it was an on-scene action taken by one of its officers (a lawful order within his power as an officer, it should be noted). The college has yet to explain what prompted that order, but school leadership has clearly decided that the invitation took priority over it, even going so far as to state that it would rescind any prior BCPD trespass orders.
I put the release out on this particular case because the arrest garnered some ink. At the end of the day, though, we wouldn't prosecute any case with this fact pattern, ball player or not: The aggrieved party in the trespassing case is Boston College, which made plain as an entity that it was not, in fact, aggrieved by his presence.
policy
You'd think the chief of BCPD or the dean would review and approve a trespass order that was a result of an incident. There must be paperwork or else no one else would know about the order. Also, the order should be for a fixed period of time.
Im also sure that if...
Williams committed a crime on campus after the basketball game, the school would have stood by its police dept, and backed the order claiming Williams should have known about the order.
Ah well, nobody got hurt.
campus cops trying to make a
campus cops trying to make a name for themselves. pathetic.