Former UA basketball coach asks federal judge to toss indictment
Attorneys for former Arizona Wildcats assistant coach Emanuel “Book” Richardson and four other men accused of bribery, fraud and conspiracy in an FBI investigation of college basketball are asking a federal judge to dismiss the charges.
Their central legal argument is that the NCAA, the governing body of college sports, is a private organization with its own rules. Violating those rules doesn’t constitute a crime under federal law, defense attorneys wrote in their recent motion asking to dismiss the criminal indictment.
“In this case, the government has singled out certain alleged NCAA rules violation as ‘corrupt’ and decided to prosecute them as federal crimes,” the attorneys for the five men wrote in Dec. 3 court filings.
They called the government’s strategy a “novel theory” inconsistent with the interpretation of law that could “extend the boundaries of federal criminal law well beyond constitutional limits.”
The motion to dismiss was filed in a New York federal court as defense attorneys and prosecutors prepare for an April trial. Prosecutors have until Jan. 14 to respond to the motion.
Richardson, an assistant men’s basketball coach at Arizona who worked
under head coach Sean Miller, was one of 10 people arrested in September 2017 after a widespread FBI investigation into alleged corruption in college basketball. University officials fired him after the scandal.
Miller isn’t charged or named in the federal indictment and has denied any wrongdoing.
The FBI investigation became three separate federal court trials, one of which recently concluded and two more that are scheduled for the spring.
The 45-year-old Richardson is scheduled for trial April 22 in a New York federal courtroom along with four other defendants, including:
❚ Former Oklahoma State University assistant men’s basketball coach Lamont Evans.
❚ Former University of Southern California assistant men’s basketball coach Anthony “Tony” Bland.
❚ Former Adidas consultant Code.
❚ Aspiring
Dawkins.
Here’s how federal prosecutors say the case unfolded:
Richardson is accused of meeting with Dawkins in June 2017 and others and agreeing to steer student athletes at Arizona toward a new sports manageand sports agent Merl Christian ment company controlled by the 25year-old Dawkins. In exchange, the indictment says Richardson accepted cash bribes totaling $20,000.
Lamont is accused of accepting at least $22,000 in bribes in exchange for agreeing to influence certain student athletes he coached, first at the University of South Carolina and then at Oklahoma State University. Code is alleged to have been willing to accept bribes in exchange for steering players to Dawkins.
Bland allegedly accepted at least $13,000 in bribes. The indictment alleges Bland directed Dawkins to pay or facilitate payment of at least $9,000 to families or close confidantes of student athletes at USC.
All five defendants pleas of not guilty.
The FBI investigation dates to 2015 and alleges financial and business managers paid bribes to assistant basketball coaches.
In some cases, the money is alleged to have gone to student athletes.
In exchange, the coaches are alleged to have promised to pressure student athletes to use the services of specific financial and business managers when the students turned pro.
Federal prosecutors say such deals could be lucrative for a financial or business manager. Successful NBA players can make tens of millions of dollars during their careers with a share of their earnings going to their business man- have entered agers and financial advisers.
NCAA rules prohibit student athletes from profiting from sports, beyond what they receive in scholarship money.
The federal indictment charges Richardson and the others with bribery, wire fraud and travel act conspiracy. Travel act conspiracy is included because the alleged behavior took place across state lines.
But defense attorneys, in court filings, said the federal government failed to establish a bribery scheme with the assistant coaches using their “official positions” to steer student athletes.
Attorneys also disputed that the alleged payments to players constituted wire fraud conspiracy and denied that the universities were the victims.
Attorneys argued that federal statutes would require a “quid pro quo” with the assistant coaches using their authority as university employees. Recommending financial advisers to players after they’ve joined the NBA is not a duty of university basketball coaches, the attorneys wrote, nor are universities in the business of making such recommendations. None of the alleged actions took place on university property, they added.
Thus, the coaches didn’t act as “agents of their respective universities” when the alleged behavior occurred, the defense attorneys argued.
The federal government’s attempt to use NCAA rules to establish a duty under the law is misplaced, they contend, a faulty theory.
“Simply put, under applicable Supreme Court precedent, the government cannot turn the NCAA rulebook into an appendix of (the U.S. criminal code),” the attorneys wrote.
In the federal indictment, prosecutors argued that college assistant coaches have enormous influence over student athletes. They said the FBI investigation revealed several instances in which coaches used that influence to steer players and their families to particular advisers, not because of the merits of those advisers but because the coaches had been bribed.
Motions to dismiss are common in criminal trials, and are usually brought by the defendant before the trial begins.
Last year, a federal judge denied a similar motion in the first trial connected to the NCAA college basketball scandal. That trial concluded in October, resulting in a jury finding defendants James Gatto, Christian Dawkins and Merl Code guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud.
Dawkins and Code are also charged in the case involving Richardson, the former Arizona Wildcats assistant coach who is set to go to trial in April.
A third case involving Chuck Person, a former Auburn assistant men’s basketball coach, and Rashan Michel, a former NBA official and clothing company founder, is scheduled for trial in February.