Re: An Alabama niggra basketball star supplied the gun in a murder. Why is he still playing?

[Obama racism]

On 19 Sep 2021, "13% = 6x the crimes!" <repar...@naacp.org> posted
some news:si7me6$k7j$4...@news.dns-netz.com:

> Something is wrong with niggers and American law enforcement

By all accounts Jamea Jonae Harris was a star in her own right. Just 23,
she already seemed to have it all: brains, beauty, happiness, humility and
a five-year-old son who was her entire world. She booked off a weekend in
January to spend with her cousin, a student at the University of Alabama.
With her boyfriend, Harris made the hour drive from her Birmingham home to
the college town of Tuscaloosa. After a Saturday night spent clubbing with
friends, Harris headed for home in a black Jeep with her boyfriend and
cousin, stopping for a late-night bite at a greasy spoon in the shadow of
Bama’s football stadium. It was just their bad luck.

According to Harris’s mother and cousin, the trio were waiting on their
food when two men approached, desperate for Harris’s attention. The more
they refused to take no for an answer, the more the tension rose. Attuned
to the vibe shift, Harris’s boyfriend proposed they just forget the food
and leave. But Harris and her companions were reportedly blocked in by two
cars and fired upon by one of the men who had approached her. Harris’s
boyfriend shot back with his own firearm and hit the gunman twice, then
tried to steer the group to safety.

Brandon Miller (24) is a freshman at Alabama
Alabama star Miller delivered gun used in killing of young mother, police
say
Read more
Struck once, Harris was the only person in the exchange not to make it out
alive. Her death probably would have been written off as yet another
inevitable consequence of urban gun violence, if police hadn’t said
members of Alabama’s high-flying basketball team were involved.

The men who couldn’t take no for an answer? Police say one of them was
Darius Miles, a lightly used junior player for Alabama. He was arrested on
capital murder charges and booted from the team, less than a month after
being shut down for the year with an ankle injury. The second man, 20-
year-old Michael Lynn Davis, Miles’s best friend but not an Alabama
player, was likewise arraigned and fingered as the triggerman. Both remain
in jail without bond.

In an attorney statement, Miles professed to being “heartbroken” over
Harris’s slaying. And if those words didn’t ring hollow then, they
certainly did after investigators testified in a Tuesday pretrial hearing
that the gun belonged to Miles and that he had sent word via text to have
it brought to him. Even more stunning: the alleged courier was Brandon
Miller, Bama’s first-year hoops phenom. Police also say freshman guard
Jaden Bradley was also on scene that night. Neither Bradley nor Miller
face criminal charges.

On the vast spectrum of college hoops scandals, this has the frame of an
all-time catastrophe – something on the scale of the murder that rocked
Baylor University’s basketball team in the mid-aughts. So far, the NCAA
and the Southeastern Conference have maintained deafening silence on the
matter. On Wednesday night Miller was in the starting lineup again for
Alabama’s game at South Carolina. In a statement before tipoff, the
athletics department threw its support behind Miller, describing him not
as a suspect but as a “cooperative witness”. Gamecocks fans, on the other
hand, were as forgiving as you’d expect, booing and chanting “lock him up”
whenever Miller touched the ball. (Miller, for his part, responded with a
career-high 41 points including the game-winning basket in overtime.)

You would think that Miller’s alleged involvement in the case would give
the Tide pause for thought about whether to play him until all the details
are clear. After all, they kicked Miles off the team as soon as his name
became associated with the case. The difference, Alabama may argue, is
that Miles has been charged with a crime and Miller has not.

Speaking to ESPN, athletics director Greg Byrnes said that the school’s
faith in Miller was reinforced by information that came to light over the
past 48 hours; not least is the contention that Miller was already on his
way to pick up Miles, who had been asking for a ride for the better part
of an hour before relaying that fateful message about the gun. One of the
attorneys further argues that Miller never even touched the gun, much less
saw it.

Some may point out the manifest difference in Alabama’s (correct)
treatment of Miles, a bit-part player, and how they handled Miller, one of
the most talented young stars in the country on a team in the running for
a national title. This much, however, is clear cut: the Crimson Tide have
treated Miller’s involvement in the case as merely a stumbling block in a
successful season, no worse than Miles’s ankle injury or a 15 February
defeat to Tennessee that dropped Alabama in the AP poll.

That Miller has escaped legal culpability has furnished the program with
an awful lot of cover. Asked why Miller won’t be charged, Tuscaloosa
district attorney Paula Whitley told AL.com “there’s nothing we can charge
him with”. Her office would appear to lack proof that Miller was aware he
was transferring the gun to Miles for an unlawful purpose. As if someone
might ask for their gun late at night for a twilight hunt.

What is not in doubt is Alabama’s handling of a case that saw a young
mother die. When confronted with the initial news of Harris’s death,
Crimson Tide coach Nate Oats was quick to pivot focus to his team’s
forthcoming game against Vanderbilt.

In a Tuesday news conference, Oats said the team closed that day’s
practice with a prayer “for the situation”, calling it “sad”. Jarringly,
on Miller’s involvement, Oats saw it as a case of “wrong spot at the wrong
time”, adding “I’m sure NBA scouts will ask.”

And he must have known how terrible it sounded to reduce a woman’s death
to its effect on a player’s NBA prospects, because he later released a
statement through the university labeling his earlier remarks unfortunate.
“In no way did I intend to downplay the seriousness of this situation or
the tragedy of that night”, the statement read.

The fouled-up public relations job was enough to make me wonder where Oats
was receiving crisis management advice. And when I soon found out that he
had reached out to Ray Lewis, the born-again NFL linebacker who had murder
charges against him dropped on the way to a Hall of Fame career, well,
suddenly everything made sense.

Alabama have so much at stake, after all. College basketball is less than
three weeks away from Selection Sunday, where the Tide hope to lock up
their first ever No 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. Miller could well
become the school’s highest draft choice since low-post leviathan Antonio
McDyess went second overall to the Denver Nuggets in 1995. The payoff
potential is especially enormous for Oats, a one-time small-timer who
could well deliver the very thing predecessors like NBA champion guard
Avery Johnson had promised: bringing Bama’s basketball team level in
prominence with Nick Saban’s formidable football factory.

In the aftermath of her daughter’s passing, Harris’s mother reportedly
agonized for days over how to break the news to Jamea’s five-year-old son
while reckoning with her own sense of devastation. That Alabama seems to
be more worried about results on the court than an actual murder should
tell you everything you need to know about the current state of collegiate
athletics and the power of athletic privilege. It’s just unfortunate that
even after Harris’s tragic killing has exposed the paradox at play here,
we’re still left wondering whether her loss will ultimately count.

<https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/feb/23/brandon-miller-alabama-
basketball-murder-jamea-harris>