Pros and Cons (15 page)

Under questioning, Washington denied knowing that the money was in the car and insisted that it belonged to his friend James Harris. When agents escorted Washington to his home, they found Harris, who claimed ownership of the cash. Bank records confirm that Harris withdrew $50,000 cash from his account on the nineteenth. Harris said the other $2,000 was cash he was carrying in his pocket. But he denied the money was to be used to purchase drugs, claiming instead that he withdrew the money earlier that day to purchase a Porsche 911 at BW Motors in Belleville, Illinois.

“Anthony didn’t even know the money was in the car,” Harris insisted in an interview for this book. “He knew I had some money, but he didn’t know the money was in the car.”

According to Harris, he arrived at Washington’s house on the nineteenth with the intention of going to purchase a Porsche. But when it got too late in the day to travel to Belleville, he postponed the purchase until the next day. In the meantime, he said he hid the $52,000 for “safekeeping” in a car parked in Washington’s driveway while he temporarily left Washington’s house to run an errand. When he returned two hours later, Harris claimed that Washington had left in the car containing his money.

The DEA did not buy any of this. Although they did not arrest Harris at that point, they seized his money and initiated their investigation into him as a co-conspirator. While the DEA did not bother to check, Harris did in fact have a deal arranged to purchase a Porsche from BW Motors. However, interviews with Harris, his attorney, Ron Norwood, and Brad Stubbs, the owner of BW Motors, leave many questions.

Stubbs confirmed that on March 18 he spoke by telephone with both Washington and Harris and reached a verbal agreement to sell a Porsche 911. For over ten years Stubbs had been building made-to-order Porsche 911s for professional athletes. His clients include Scottie Pippen, Charles Oakley, John Starks, Anthony Bonner, and Al Toon, among others.

The Porsche he agreed to sell to Harris actually belonged to New Jersey Nets forward Kevin Edwards. Stubbs had customized the car for Edwards in 1992. After owning the car for five years, Edwards asked Stubbs to assist him in selling it. One afternoon in early March, Anthony Washington, who Stubbs admitted would infrequently stop by his shop to browse, entered the garage and said he had a close friend who would be interested in Edwards’s Porsche.

On March 20, the day after the DEA seized his money from Washington’s car, Harris returned to his bank, and withdrew $35,000. This time the money was in the form of a cashier’s check made out to Kevin Edwards. He then drove to Belleville and bought the car.

When asked why he initially withdrew $50,000, Harris said, “I was going to spend $15,000 on my stereo, on my alarm system, my tires and my rims.”

However, when Stubbs was asked if he had quoted Harris a price for installation of a stereo and the purchase of new tires, he responded, “We had never discussed that. There was talk about doing a stereo and what-not. But I know nothing about the fifty-two thousand. That was not going to come to me.”

The surplus of money found in Harris’s bank bag was the same amount Washington was supposed to pay for one kilo of cocaine. When asked about this troubling coincidence in an interview for this book, Harris said, “I can’t explain it because I didn’t know nothing about no dope. I never knew what was going on in the beginning.”

When asked if Washington would have involved him in a drug deal, Harris said, “Anthony wouldn’t put me in no circle like that. I don’t care what he was doing and I don’t know what he was doing. Don’t care to know. But whatever he was doing, he would never have put it in my face.”

W
hen the indictments against Harris, Washington, and the others were announced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Vermeil told reporters he was “surprised and disappointed.” Surprised? Vermeil had known the troubling aspects of Harris’s case for months. “One day Vermeil called me in the office and said he needed to talk to me about something,” said Harris. “I just told him the truth.” According to Harris, that meeting took place in the spring. “He knew. He knew long before anybody else.”

In addition to receiving assurances from Vermeil that the team would support him, Harris also had a private meeting with Rams vice president of football operations Lynn Stiles. In that meeting, Stiles, according to Harris, asked him point-blank, “Were you involved in this?”

“I told him no. He said, ‘Well, we’re going to stick with you all the way through this, and we’ll see you through.’”

Harris took the unified support from coaches and management for granted. Given his experience in the NFL, he expected nothing less. When the Rams signed him they were fully aware that he was on probation for a felony assault conviction from his days with the Minnesota Vikings.

On January 26, 1996, Harris had pleaded guilty to third-degree assault and was sentenced to ten days in the Hennepin County Adult Correction Facility in Minnesota. The case stemmed from a domestic violence incident on December 29, 1995. Police arrested Harris after he left his wife at the emergency room with a broken nose and fractured collarbone.

Prior to that, Harris had pleaded guilty to fifth-degree assault on December 15, 1992, after police reported finding blood under the left eye of his first wife. The police report indicated that Harris hit his wife with a closed fist and kneed her in the stomach and chest. It also noted that this was not the first time police had been dispatched to the Harris house on a domestic violence call.

“There are a lot of players that end up in the National Football League,” admitted Vermeil in an interview, “and a lot of people have told them, ‘You do that one more time and you’re not going to play anymore.’ And they don’t believe you because they’ve played one more time. And they did it in high school, they did in junior college, they did it in college and they get in the National Football League and they do it anyway.”

Harris had every reason to believe Vermeil’s endless definition of “one more chance.” His own experience with the Rams had proven the point.

Less than two months after signing Harris in April 1996, the Rams were notified by St. Louis police that a felony arrest warrant had been issued against Harris in Minnesota on July 11. He was wanted for failing to make court-ordered payments in conjunction with his conviction for assaulting his wife.

Patti Cohen, a police clerk in the warrant office of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department, answered the telephone when a person identifying himself as a Rams coach called to resolve the matter. “Just wanted to know what the warrant was for and how much it was to pay it off,” said the coach.

“Three thousand and thirty dollars to pay it off,” Cohen responded.

The coach then indicated that he would take care of it, and Cohen provided him with a number to call to inquire about getting an extension on the fine. The records indicate that an extension was obtained and the warrant was squelched. Although the records do not reveal by whom, on October 2, 1996, the fine was paid in full.

T
he week that Harris’s federal indictment was handed down, representatives from the FBI paid their annual training camp visit to the Rams. As part of the NFL’s efforts to educate its players on the dangers associated with being a wealthy celebrity, FBI agents visit every team prior to the start of the regular season. Their presentation to players and coaches warns of the influences of organized crime and illegal gamblers, and the dangers of drugs and other illicit behavior.

Many of the players being warned about these dangers have had extensive contact with law enforcement, some of them for carrying out the very crimes that the league is attempting to insulate them from. Besides Harris, Tucker, and Phillips, Rams in attendance included:

• Linebacker Percell Gaskins, who was arrested at Kansas State University in November of 1995 in connection with an assault that left two people and a dog injured. The charges against Gaskins were ultimately dropped.

• Running back Craig “Iron Head” Heyward, who pleaded guilty in February of 1991 to disorderly conduct and public drunkenness after slamming a police officer’s hand in a car door during a fight with officers who were trying to arrest him. Heyward had used his car to push another vehicle out of a parking space he wanted.

• In February of 1992 Heyward was convicted and received a suspended sentence after being arrested for assaulting two women at a fund-raiser. Heyward, who was drunk at the time of the incident, head-butted one of the women.

• Offensive lineman Gerald Perry. On November 22, 1988, Perry was charged with raping a woman at gunpoint. A jury later found him not guilty.

• On June 15, 1989, Perry was arrested for soliciting a prostitute and subsequently convicted and ultimately served a fifteen-day jail sentence.

• On September 7, 1989, Perry was arrested for soliciting a prostitute, assault and battery, false imprisonment, and impersonating a police officer. He was convicted on the prostitution charge and served another fifteen-day jail sentence.

• A jury acquitted Perry of assaulting a man on May 9, 1990.

• On May 24, 1991, Perry pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting the fiancee of one of his teammates on the Denver Broncos. Perry was sentenced to 180 days in jail and served sixty-five.

• On May 9, 1994, Perry agreed to an out-of-court settlement with an Anaheim, California, woman who filed a suit against him, alleging that he threatened to kill her if she did not have sex with him.

H
arris said he knew going in that the FBI would not talk about his case. “I wasn’t uncomfortable,” Harris told the authors. “My incident never came up. The agent knew that I was in the room, so they never said anything about it. But they said something about Darryl Henley’s case.”

Carefully choosing an example of a player whose career was prematurely ended due to crime, the FBI selected former Rams defensive standout Darryl Henley. In 1994 he was indicted on federal cocaine charges, accused of recruiting Rams cheerleader Tracy Ann Donaho to carry twenty-five pounds of cocaine from Los Angeles to Atlanta. The same Rams administration had permitted Henley to continue starting games for the Rams while free on bond. Citing the familiar “innocent until proven guilty” theme, the Rams played Henley until he was sent to federal prison after a jury convicted him in March 1995 (see Chapter 16).

Ironically, Henley was incarcerated in the maximum security prison in Marion, Illinois, located just 100 miles from the Rams’ new home in St. Louis.

The FBI’s discussion of the Henley case makes clear that only prison will prevent a player from playing. Unfortunately, this compelling account did nothing to persuade players to change their criminal ways. “A lot of them are just unreachable,” said Harris in a December 1997 interview for this book. “They just don’t care. ‘Man, I’m not listening to what you’re talking about. I’m not trying to hear that. I’m my own person.’ That’s their attitude about it.

“The players usually sleep through the sessions. They don’t care. It’s just something that has to be done. It’s not a good use of time. The only reason guys ask questions is to try and make the meeting go longer so they don’t have to go to practice or go watch films.”

H
arris knew what was coming when federal agents arrested him on July 28. Rams vice president of player development and legal counsel Kevin Warren was hastily dispatched to Peoria, Illinois, to testify at Harris’s detention hearing. The Rams were hoping to persuade the judge to allow Harris to remain free on bond so he could remain in camp.

Warren made it to the courthouse to hear federal Judge Michael Mihm open the proceedings. “This indictment charges four people with the offense of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute cocaine and cocaine in the form of cocaine base,” said Judge Mihm in a very deliberate, matter-of-fact tone. “This defendant James Edward Harris is charged in that indictment as an aider and abettor.

“If the information I have is correct, this offense upon conviction carries with it a minimum mandatory sentence of at least ten years in prison and up to life and a fine of $4 million and a period of supervised release of at least five years and it could be for the rest of the defendant’s life.”

Harris sat in stunned silence. Suddenly the immediacy of getting back to practice was unimportant. He was staring at the prospect of spending the rest of his life behind bars.

Although no stranger to criminal proceedings, never before did his presence in the courtroom jeopardize his career, much less his liberty. However, he now was in federal court being aggressively prosecuted. The game had forever changed: Harris was not fighting for a job, he was fighting for his life.

Federal prosecutor Randy Massey argued that Harris should be jailed until his trial. Citing Harris’s felony conviction for assault in Minnesota, as well as his prior domestic violence case, Massey insisted that his record in conjunction with his current role in a felony drug case qualified Harris as a danger to the community.

Warren’s job was to refute the government’s arguments that Harris should be detained pending his trial because he was a risk of flight and posed a danger to the community.

“With regard to his risk of flight,” said defense attorney Kevin Green, “what is your opinion? Is Mr. Harris a risk to leave?”

“He just signed a three-year, $2.9 million contract sometime in February,” answered Warren. “If Mr. Harris were to leave camp, he would probably be forced to refund his signing bonus. And quite naturally, if he’s not playing, he’s not going to get paid his salary. He would run the heavy risk of not being a member of the team. So as far as risking flight, I see no reason why he would do that. He would have no means of income if he did that.”

Warren went on to explain that Coach Vermeil’s strict minute-by-minute scheduling regimentation left no time for players to get into trouble away from the field. According to Warren, players were subject to curfews, bed checks performed by security guards, and fines for missing or being late to meetings and practices. Harris had done everything expected of him by the coaches during camp.