We were in the courtroom with the former Rutgers football players
University officials were not present
Last week the Rutgers football players arrested in April appeared in court. And I was in the courtroom.
The room was crowded with lawyers, family members and officers. There was an air of confusion among some of the lawyers, apparently because some of them hadn’t seen the viral video of the April fight recorded on a cell phone.
New Jersey Superior Court Judge Dennis V. Nieves was presiding and Deputy First Assistant Prosecutor Christopher Kuberiet was prosecuting on the case but was not there for the trial.
Allow me to catch you up to speed.
Football players Nadir Barnwell, Ruhan Peele, Razohnn Gross, Tejay Johnson and brothers Daryl and Delon Stephenson were charged with conspiracy to riot, aggravated assault in the second degree and riot in the fourth degree for the incident on April 25, 2015.
Middlesex County Superior Courthouse officials charged the students for their alleged involvement in an attack on another student on Delafield Street, in which a 19-year-old male suffered a broken jaw.
Johnson, who is still incarcerated with a bail set at $625,000, along with former football player Andre Boggs (with bail at $300,000), appeared in court in September for a separate incident involving three home invasions in April and May. They are charged with stealing money and marijuana from the home.
The full charges include criminal restraint, theft, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, robbery, burglary while armed and conspiracy to commit an armed robbery, according to the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office press release.
In court the players appeared with their legal team. The students charged in the robberies and attack were told they would be suspended in the interim, but Rutgers would continue to monitor the case.
Rutgers’ Athletic Director Julie Hermann said: “The students involved are currently suspended from our program. We continue to monitor the situation.” Somewhat surprisingly, Rutgers officials were not present.
No decisions were made on Wednesday, as Judge Nieves said nothing would happen until all parties were informed of the case status. He ruled the players will have to go to in front of a jury on December 9, 2015.
The judge then encouraged the players to file for pretrial intervention (PTI), which provides defendants opportunities for alternatives to the traditional process of ordinary prosecution. They could be eligible for probation or rehabilitation.
If the request for PTI is successfully completed, the players will not go to trial. The charges could be dismissed and expunged from their records.
But the case isn’t as simple as this. Between the seven former Rutgers football players and students, there are two separate cases with very different potential outcomes.
In the media, the two cases have been linked together because all of the players, except for Daryl Stephenson, were arrested on the same day.
Everyone remembers the confusion following the events in April. The separate home invasions and attack caused a feeding frenzy for the media. It was a race to see who could get the story out the fastest, but that only confused people about the role each player reportedly played in the events.
Follow The Tab Rutgers for updates on the case.