Jury Duty --again

BCEagle91
Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:44:35 +0000

[The Story of Prisoner F95488 - ESPN The Magazine’s feature on Eric Frimpong, former UCSB soccer star - ESPN](The Story of Prisoner F95488 - ESPN The Magazine's feature on Eric Frimpong, former UCSB soccer star - ESPN)

Frimpong enters the courtroom, which is packed with students and parents, former teammates and coaches – row upon row of supporters. They’ve come for the sentencing that concludes a trial that has rocked this community: People v. Eric Frimpong. Or more accurately, People v. Eric Frimpong and His People.

A victim’s advocate reads a statement on behalf of the accuser, referred to in this story and in news coverage throughout the trial as Jane Doe. “I don’t care that he’s a soccer star…and I’m a nobody,” the statement says. “Eric Frimpong ruined my life.”

There’s a rumble in the gallery. If his supporters could chime in now, they’d say that the kid in the prison garb has never spoken an unkind word or acted aggressively toward anyone. They would remind the court of the points made at trial: that his accuser was a woman with little memory of what happened that night because of a near-toxic blood alcohol level; that Frimpong’s DNA wasn’t found on the victim; that semen found on her underwear belonged to a jealous boyfriend, a white student who was never a suspect. They would argue that overzealous law enforcement was determined to nail a high-profile athlete, facts be damned, and that this was the Duke lacrosse case all over again – except that the defendants in the Duke case were white men from affluent families with the means to navigate America’s justice system, unlike Frimpong, who is poor and an immigrant.



Another high-profile case that sounds like railroading but this time the prosecution and police succeeded.