DA Admits He Let Alabama Football Players Off Easy Because They Played Football

A little over a month ago, Alabama teammates Cameron Robinson and Laurence Jones were arrested in Louisiana after police found them with a bunch of weed and a pair of guns, one of which was stolen. Robinson, a starting tackle and All-SEC player, caught a felony charge for possession of the stolen gun.

Today, District Attorney Jerry Jones dropped all the charges against Jones and Robinson. His rationale? He said that there was insufficient evidence, but his main reason is that didn’t want to prosecute them because they were football players. Via KNOE-8:

I want to emphasize once again that the main reason I’m doing this is that I refuse to ruin the lives of two young men who have spent their adolescence and teenage years, working and sweating, while we were all in the air conditioning.

Here he is, explaining himself:

There is a long, established pattern of college athletes and football players receiving preferential treatment from their schools and from the law, but for someone to come clean and admit that he was willing to look the other way because the people in his court happened to be football stars is incredible. Nick Saban has said that he would wait for the legal process to run its course before deciding on any disciplinary measures, and given the sudden dropping of these charges and Robinson’s importance to the team, there’s very little chance Robinson or Jones receive any significant penalties for their arrest.

Not that they necessarily should, of course. Both Jones and the players’ defense attorney cited insufficient evidence, so it’s unclear whether or not the charges were legitimate. However, the DA freely admitting that the players’ status as football players was more important than the evidence concerns tells you all you need to know here.