Legal News

After Player?s Death, High School Football Coach Charged With Homicide

By Dan Slater

As a longtime Minnesota Vikings fan, we mourned the 2001 death of offensive lineman Korey Stringer. The one-time Ohio State U. Buckeye died from complications brought on by heat stroke during summer training camp.

Such heat-exposure deaths aren’t uncommon in football. And such cases have led to numerous civil lawsuits. But yesterday, a Kentucky high school football coach was criminally charged in the death of Max Gilpin, a 15 year-old offensive lineman at Pleasure Ridge Park high school who died last summer after collapsing at practice. The charge is reckless homicide.

Not many facts have emerged. But it seems that the coach, David Jason Stinson, was directing practice on August 20, during 94 degree heat, when Gilpin collapsed and was brought to the hospital with a body temperature of 107 degrees. No autopsy was performed, reports the AP, but it appeared Gilpin died from complications from heat stroke, according to the coroner’s office. According to a report on MSNBC, coaches had refused to let players take water breaks.

Stinson’s attorney, Alex Dathorne, told the AP that Stinson maintains his innocence and looks forward to “bringing out the whole story.” He added, “We’re certainly disappointed in the grand jury’s decision to indict.”

For a brief tutorial on Kentucky’s criminal law and an opinion on the strength of the case against Stinson, we rang U. of Kentucky Law’s Andrea Dennis, a crim law prof. She told us that reckless homicide is the lowest level of criminal culpability in Kentucky. In other states, she says, the same charge might be called negligent homicide or gross negligence. A person acts recklessly, she says, “when he fails to perceive a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the result will occur.” Failure to perceive the risk must be a gross deviation from the standard of care.

“If it’s true that there was water denied, that strikes me as problematic,” said Dennis, a former defense lawyer. “What we’re talking about is coaches entrusted with the care of children. This kid was 15. And 15 year-olds aren’t always the most cautious people. They want to please their coach and their parents and show off to their teammates. So a reasonable person should know about the limitations of a high school athlete, and should know that a kid might not necessarily ask for water if he’s being told not to.”

LB Readers: Does the case against Stinson belong in criminal court?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 23, 2009 (boomark / email).