Indiana

The Facts Will Be These

By Abdul Hakim-Shabazz

By now you know the Hamilton and Hendricks County Prosecutors have decided not to press felony charges against four Carmel High School basketball players for attacking a fellow student on a bus and engaging in what Hamilton County Prosecutor Sonia Leerkamp called “something beyond hazing.”

Instead John Lazkowski, Oscar Falodun, Brandon Hoge, and Robert Kitzinger were all charged with misdemeanor battery and criminal recklessness in hazing incident.  In her news conference, Leerkamp said the authorities interviewed nearly 60 witnesses, under oath, and that is what led her to the misdemeanor charges.

While that has caused outrage in certain sections of the community and only added to the perception of a “Carmel Cover Up” I caution people that eventually, the facts are going to come out and all the lucid details that everyone wants to know will be made public.  I say this because there are going to be two trials.  There will be a criminal trial and a civil trial.   There will be depositions, interviews, testimony, direct examinations and cross-examinations and all that other stuff you’re used to seeing on Law & Order.

Being both an attorney and a media-type, I can understand where both sides are coming from in this debate.  The media wants all the information, the prosecutor’s office wants to keep things as close to the vest as possible.  I frankly think both sides should give in a bit.  The prosecutors should have offered up more detail and the media could have cooled its jets somewhat.

At the end of the day, it is all going to come out in the wash.  It always does.

Full post as published by Indiana Barrister on May 18, 2010 (boomark / email).