Weak Charges Against Ravens Marlon Humphrey Dismissed
The 3rd degree felony theft and misdemeanor harassment case against Baltimore Ravens Marlon Humphrey was dismissed yesterday due to lack of evidence. This case screamed waste of police, prosecutorial and judicial resources from the very beginning, but despite Alabama appearing to have a high poverty rate, they clearly have a wealth of legal resources to waste.
His lawyer, Paul Patterson, indicated same stating that “the evidence was overwhelming that the Uber driver was the aggressor and escalated a situation that could have been resolved without wasting the time and resources of our local law enforcement”.
Various sources have slightly different versions of the story. It appears that Marlon Humphrey was on the way to a hotel with 2 women, who clearly were witnesses to this debacle. During the car ride and/or at the end of it, Humphrey gets into a verbal dispute with the driver over a phone charger. He thinks, erroneously or not, that it’s his, the Uber driver claims otherwise. Humphrey gets ticked, grabs all the cords, possibly inadvertently while grabbing what he believed was his own, and exits the car. Words are exchanged. They made it seem like he was involved in a physical altercation, but a cop pressing a felony charge over a cheap phone charger is not hesitating to lay an assault charge.
The arresting officer indicated that when he arrived to the hotel Marlon Humphrey was sitting on a bed in the hotel room holding a charger that did not fit his phone. There is never again mention of multiple cords so one of them likely WAS his! There are a couple of innocent or mistake of fact possibilities here, but the case was dismissed for lack of evidence, and my issue with this whole thing lays elsewhere. I’m not necessarily condoning his behaviour as we don’t know the facts and there’s always at least three sides to every story, but this does seem at best a misunderstanding, at worse a minor issue made into a mountain.
I don’t know how things work in Alabama, but generally the common sense approach in cases like this, would have been for him to return the charger, which presumably he was forced to do, the matter would have ended there. Had the driver missed a ride, or lost income, he could have sued civilly. One of the police officers indicated the driver insisted on pressing charges. The police could have refused then, due to lack of evidence, but this did happen in Alabama. The prosecution could have dropped it when they first reviewed the case, but no, it had to wait for a judge to make a ruling on something the prosecution should already have been aware of. Humphrey’s lawyer, Paul Patterson, likely deflected blame away from the police because Humphrey’s family, including extended family, still lives in Alabama.
Marlon Humphrey is a black football player, not a white investment banker named Chet Beauregard and Alabama reportedly has the 3rd highest murder rate and a history of improper racial prosecutions. Perhaps they thought that prosecuting this case would be a deterrent to potential murderers? Thankfully he didn’t end up with a criminal conviction over a charger valued at $3 by defense counsel and $15 by the police.
