Missoula (34 page)

PART SIX

Aftershocks

On the playing field, every single mistake a player makes is pointed out and criticized until corrected. By design, on the field of real life, the athlete rarely faces similar accountability….Sadly, and too often with tragic repercussions, athletes don’t distinguish right from wrong because they actually have no idea of what is right and what is wrong. Rules don’t apply. Acceptable standards of behavior don’t apply. Little infractions become bigger ones, and adults turn a blind eye. If someone gets into trouble, the first move is for an authority figure, usually in the form of a coach, to get them out of it.

When that doesn’t work, whether they’re high school quarterbacks or pro-ball pitchers, one of two things happens. Sometimes, especially at the high school level, the community rallies around the accused, wanting to believe that “boys will be boys.”…We don’t want to admit that in all these stories, it’s not about the individual, or the individual sport, but about the culture we have allowed to grow around them….

It is in vogue now to blame and condemn athletes. They should be held accountable for their behavior….But we are just as culpable, allowing them to exist in a realm all their own and not caring a bit about what we have turned them into—as long as they bring us victory.

B
UZZ
B
ISSINGER

“The Boys in the Clubhouse”

New York Times
, October 18, 2014

      J
ust before the Jordan Johnson trial began, the
New York Times
published an article in which Montana Regent Pat Williams said, “We’ve had sex assaults, vandalism, beatings by football players….The university has recruited thugs for its football team, and this thuggery has got to stop.” Williams was widely denounced for these remarks by Griz fans, who circulated a petition demanding that he be removed from the Board of Regents.

On March 10, 2013, nine days after Johnson was acquitted, Williams published a guest column in the
Missoulian
to address the ongoing criticism, and to try to save his job. He wrote,

We Montanans have always preferred straight talk from those who represent us. My choice of words with the reporter was candid; chosen to illuminate my concern with the actions of outlier, convicted student-athletes whose behavior have [sic] damaged public and personal safety as well as scarred our university….

For 50 years I have worked to improve and enhance educational opportunities for young people across our state and throughout the nation. As a teacher and a member of the Board of Regents, I will continue to defend our efforts to educate the next generation and form leaders of conscience. If I turned a blind eye to violence in our university communities it would impede these goals.

A week later, David Paoli responded to Williams with a
Missoulian
guest column of his own. It made Paoli look like a sore winner:

Pat Williams is a friend of mine. So, he will understand my advice….

Williams abused his position as a regent to ignorantly blast University of Montana student-athletes….

When he was roundly criticized for his bombastic statements, he wrote a guest opinion to explain himself. Pat, when you are explaining, you’re losing….

More than his offensive language, the timing of Williams’ ambush is more concerning. His quotes ran on Feb. 6 in a
New York Times
story regarding a highly publicized trial set to begin two days later. His “thugs” and “thuggery” quotes were printed two paragraphs above a discussion of whether the falsely accused could receive a “fair trial amid such controversy.”…

Montanans expect honest, reasoned judgment and respect from their representatives. Montanans do not expect cheap quotes to the
New York Times
to develop more frenzy and throw kerosene on an already blazing situation….

Williams is not a racist. However, his use of the racial epitaphs [sic] “thugs” and “thuggery” are racist. Anyone who has lived in D.C. or Seattle or Berkeley or anywhere else knows very clearly that the use of these words have [sic] serious and hurtful racial overtones. The use of these racial slurs requires an apology.

Five days after Paoli’s piece ran, the
Missoulian
published a rejoinder from former Montana Supreme Court justice Terry Trieweiler, one of the most esteemed lawyers in the state:

Missoula lawyer David Paoli is a friend of mine. So I’m certain he won’t be offended by my opinion of what he characterized as “advice” to Pat Williams….

Let me preface my remarks by pointing out that I’ve been a college football fan all of my life. Football paid for my college
education. And, I’ve been a season-ticket holder to Grizzlies football for many years.

Still, I’ve been mystified by the reaction of many Grizzlies football fans to Williams’ remarks describing too many of the team’s players as “thugs” and his commitment as a regent to end the “thuggery.”

Paoli lambasted Williams’ remarks as “ignorant,” “abusive of his position as a regent” and unfair to Paoli’s client. He threw in a little race-baiting for good measure, even though the term used by Williams is racially neutral and the offenders he referred to were both black and white.

It seems to me, on the other hand, that anyone who doesn’t recognize the problems Williams described wouldn’t be fit to serve as a regent and that the real “ignorance” is demonstrated by attacking the messenger for his unpleasant message.

It might be helpful to review the conduct over the past five years that he accurately characterized as “thuggery.”

It includes a fatal shooting by Jimmy Wilson and his teammate Qwenton Freeman’s refusal to participate in the investigation, even though he witnessed it, following which Wilson was found not guilty and they were welcomed back to the team; Freeman’s numerous convictions for acts of violence and ultimate dismissal from the team; Freeman’s armed burglary with the assistance of several other players; the brutal assaults on another student on campus by two other players; Trumaine Johnson’s and Andrew Swink’s violent assault on another student; Johnson’s and Gerald Kemp’s obstruction of a peace officer; Beau Donaldson’s rape of a female companion; several players’ alleged involvement in a gang rape; the University of Montana president’s admission, following an independent investigation, that a number of players had been involved in sexual assaults; and the recent brutal beating and robbery of a convenience store clerk by a former player with a history of other violent and illegal conduct. Throw in several other violent assaults on women by some of these same players.

During the same period of time, seven players have been
arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs—a couple of them repeat offenders.

As a result of this history, the university is being investigated by the NCAA, the Justice Department, and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

If people who kill others, rape others, beat others, and burglarize and rob others aren’t thugs, then what are they? And, how much thuggery does it take before a member of the Board of Regents is free to say we need to do something about it?

While it is true that Paoli’s client was recently acquitted of the charges against him, Paoli takes himself and the acquittal too seriously when he infers that the acquittal of one player vindicates the entire program, or makes Williams’ comments any less true….

As alarming as this five-year pattern of conduct should be, the greater long-term problem will come from the culture of entitlement that causes players here, and elsewhere, to think they are unaccountable for their conduct because of their athletic ability and the knee-jerk reaction of program supporters, including Paoli, to anyone who questions where and how things might have gone wrong.

There’s no one in the state more qualified to serve on the Board of Regents than Pat Williams. He has spent a lifetime in service to public education and was defending the Constitution, including the rights of the accused, at some political cost, long before most of his detractors took any interest in the criminal justice system. To think his appointment could be derailed over comments that were both honest and long overdue, though, would suggest one miscalculation on Pat Williams’ part—his belief that most Montanans appreciate “straight talk.”

In 2012, Governor Brian Schweitzer nominated Williams to the Montana Board of Regents of Higher Education, to a term due to expire in 2019, but the nomination required confirmation by the state senate. On March 20, 2013, the Montana Senate Education Committee held a confirmation hearing on Williams’s nomination, and most of the hearing was spent debating Williams’s comments to the
Times
. Jim Foley, who had been forced to resign as UM’s vice president for external relations after playing a controversial role in the university’s rape scandal, and had served as Williams’s staff director when Williams was a U.S. congressman, argued against Williams’s confirmation. His former boss’s published statements, Foley fulminated, “were callous and injurious, both to the citizens of this state and to the thousands of UM student-athletes and UM alumni around this country….Enough is enough with this name-calling against young men who in most cases can’t defend themselves against words.”

On April 4, the Montana Senate voted on Pat Williams’s confirmation. The tally was 26–23 to reject his nomination, and he was ousted from the Board of Regents.

TEN DAYS AFTER
the Jordan Johnson trial ended, Allison Huguet was at her father’s house in Missoula, watching the five o’clock news, when she learned from a report broadcast by the local NBC affiliate that Beau Donaldson had asked the Sentence Review Division of the Montana Supreme Court to reconsider the sentence he’d received for raping her.

Huguet was astounded. To avoid a jury trial, and a possible sentence of up to one hundred years in prison, in September 2012 Donaldson had signed a plea deal with the state of Montana in which he agreed to plead guilty to raping Huguet in return for a guarantee that he would be sentenced to no more than ten years at the state prison. The deal also included a condition that unambiguously stated, “By signing below and accepting the benefit of this agreement the Defendant expressly waives any right to appeal….Defendant further waives any right…to make application for sentence review.”

The state had held up its end of the bargain on January 11, 2013, when Judge Karen Townsend sentenced Beau Donaldson to ten years at the state prison. Yet Donaldson was now trying to rescind his promise not to appeal his sentence to the supreme court.

The Sentence Review Division, consisting of three judges, nevertheless agreed to hold a hearing to reconsider Donaldson’s sentence. These judges could decide to reduce his sentence. But they could also
decide to increase it, so requesting the review was not without risk. Milt Datsopoulos, Donaldson’s lawyer, said Donaldson was willing to take that risk because “we felt so strongly” that the sentence was “clearly excessive.”

The hearing to review the sentence was held on May 2, 2013, in a small room inside the Montana State Prison at Deer Lodge, where Beau Donaldson was incarcerated. Milt Datsopoulos addressed the court first. He felt the sentence was excessive because of Judge Townsend’s “failure to provide the option of a sentence to the Department of Corrections rather than a sentence directly to the Montana State Prison.”

Datsopoulos argued that the sentence imposed hadn’t been balanced with the need to rehabilitate Donaldson, to help prevent him from becoming a recidivist. “Unlike a lot of star athletes,” Datsopoulos told the court, Donaldson “was a good student….He was a person of value, substance, ability, and was no threat to the community.” Were it not for alcohol, he insisted, “this young man wouldn’t be in prison. His whole life is, almost, pristine….Incarcerating Donaldson in the state prison wasn’t necessary,” Datsopoulos maintained, saying that it was “avoidable” by letting him serve his time at the Department of Corrections instead.

Following Datsopoulos, Beau Donaldson told the court, “I do take responsibility for the actions that I’ve done…and the hurt that I’ve caused. And, I just feel that if I can get the opportunity to be sentenced to the Department of Corrections, I can not only rehabilitate myself, but make myself a better person.”

Donaldson’s mother, Cathy, testified that Beau “has always been a good person….He was raised that way….Yes, he does need to be punished. But he also needs a chance. He was just shy of twenty-one years old when he made a very, very bad decision….When my son puts his mind to something, he will do it. His goal is to have a life. My goal for him is finish his college education, find happiness, get married, have children, be a wonderful father. I am not as young as I would like to be. But I would like to be able to be alive to see that. I plead and pray that you have read and looked at everything, and you have open eyes and an open heart. Because there’s a plate missing at my dinner table, and I want it back.”

Cathy Donaldson told the three judges that Beau’s “sentence is our sentence. I’m selfish. I want to see him in a program where he can get the help that he needs. I don’t want to see him sitting in a cell and not getting the opportunity that he deserves.”

Larry Donaldson, Beau’s father, asserted to the court that Beau “is the only person that’s been totally honest from day one….He’s never varied from the truth.” When Beau called Larry from jail to say he’d been arrested, Larry said, “He told me, ‘If I did something wrong, Dad, I need to take responsibility.’…He’s a big part of a lot of people’s lives. Just give him a chance….I love you, Beau.”

WHEN IT WAS
her turn to testify, Allison Huguet began by explaining that she “came today not because I want to be here, at all.” Then she turned toward Beau Donaldson and, choking up with emotion, said, “Listening to your mom breaks my heart.” Immediately thereafter, her voice hardened, however, and she told the judges that Larry Donaldson’s claim that Beau “is the only one that’s been honest” was not only untrue but “a complete slap in the face.” After Beau Donaldson’s arrest, Huguet pointed out, he lied to numerous people, saying that she had consented to have sex with him on the night he’d raped her and falsely claiming that she’d had consensual sex with him on other occasions before the night he raped her.

Huguet was infuriated by Milt Datsopoulos’s statement that requiring Beau to serve his sentence in the state prison was “avoidable.” She said, “Well, raping me was also avoidable. And it’s a choice he made.” She observed that Donaldson could have requested a trial but chose to make a plea deal instead. “I cannot understand why Beau even has the right to ask for a review of his sentence,” she said, after he’d explicitly agreed to waive that right in the plea deal.

Datsopoulos, Huguet reminded the court, claimed Beau’s “life had been pristine,” because his criminal record listed no serious prior offenses. “However,” she said, “if you looked at all the facts in this case, you will see that Beau absolutely has a lot of past criminal behavior.” She noted that Donaldson had admitted to underage drinking; lying to the police; illegally obtaining and using Adderall, painkillers, and cocaine; and disorderly conduct charges that had landed him
in jail the weekend before he was arrested for raping her. Moreover, Donaldson had sexually assaulted Hillary McLaughlin.

“While Beau may not have been charged for…these acts, some of which are felonies,” Huguet continued, “it does not take away from the fact that these crimes had very serious effects on others. It is clear that Beau has gotten away with a lot during his short twenty-three years of life. And it worries me that if this sentence is reduced, he will once again be sent the message that his actions are acceptable.” Milt Datsopoulos, she said, brought up Donaldson’s “age and potential” as a reason why sentencing him to the state prison was excessive. The only potential Huguet saw in Beau Donaldson, she noted, “was a potential for hurting a lot of females. Being a young and charming football player, Beau had—and I’m sure still would have—a very large victim pool.”