Former Argo pleads guilty
Plea agreement for weapons and drug charges
Robert Baker, a physical slotback who compared himself to “a pit bull that somebody has in their yard” during an eventful three seasons with the Toronto Argonauts, is facing time in federal prison in the United States after pleading guilty to drugs and weapons charges.
The 37-year-old was pulled over on a routine traffic stop earlier this year on a highway in Georgia, and a police officer found 59.5 grams of heroin and a handgun during his search of the car. Baker entered a guilty plea in October, and is scheduled for sentencing on Jan. 13, facing anywhere from five years to life in prison.
With the plea agreement, though, his attorney, Jason Malone Ferguson, said there is hope Baker could be sentenced to fewer than five years. Baker is already in custody.
“I can tell you he is very accepting of what he did wrong,” Ferguson said. “Robert struck me as being someone who fell on hard times coming out of the NFL and the CFL, and allowed himself to be influenced by people who didn’t really care about him.
“But I think that he knows that it’s nobody’s fault but his own.”
Baker joined the Argos in 2004, after bouncing around the NFL for parts of five seasons, and he made an immediate impact. He helped Toronto win the Grey Cup that year, a win that lent a sense of renewal to a franchise that had fallen into bankruptcy a year earlier.
He had 1,000 receiving yards for a second straight season in 2005, but problems began bubbling to the surface. The Argos suspended him for one game after Baker punched teammate Noel Prefontaine in the face during a sideline confrontation in Calgary.
Early in 2006, Baker was fined for shoving a TSN camera operator. And then, in August, he was released. The final straw seemed to be that Baker missed a team meeting before a game in Montreal.
“He was emotional, and he would respond, sometimes, with his emotions,” veteran Argos running back Jeff Johnson said Thursday. “And at times, that would have hurt us with a penalty. But his heart was on his sleeve, and that’s the way he played football. And you definitely appreciated the way he played.”
“He was probably one of the better receivers that have played in this organization, at least in the time that I’ve spent in this organization,” said Prefontaine, a long-time kicker. “He was a very, very good football player. It was unfortunate, right?”
Baker had been in trouble with the law before. He pleaded guilty to trafficking cocaine in university, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. In the end, he served less than a year, with favourable terms in a plea bargain leading to his parole.
Those experiences became material for a songwriting career he launched in Toronto, as a rapper performing under the stage name Shake Severs. Some of his lyrics were raw, he said, because they reflected his life.
“I’m just a straight-forward dude,” he said in an interview with the National Post in 2005. “Everybody who knows me, I play with everybody. But if you don’t know me, you gotta be careful what you’re gonna say and how you approach me.
“It’s like a pit bull that somebody has in their yard. The pit bull is, like, trying to bite everybody that comes by that gate ’til the master comes out there — somebody who he knows, who fed him, who showed him love.”
Baker is from Gainesville, Fla., and had been living in Florida when he was pulled over in Georgia. Accordi ng to the plea agreement, a sheriff’s deputy pu l led the former football star over on Jan. 20, believing Baker’s car windows had been tinted beyond the allowed limits.
The windows were fine. But according to the deputy, Baker appeared to get more nervous as the stop wore on: “His hands were shaky, and his breathing labored.”
In the court documents, the deputy claimed to have noticed a stash of bills folded — with black rubber bands — in a pocket of a backpack in the front seat of the car. He requested permission to search the car, and began with Baker’s consent.
The officer then found “a sandwich type baggie with what appeared to be a packed brown substance,” and put Baker in handcuffs. A handgun was found later in the search.
After his arrest, Ferguson said his client visited “numerous” churches and schools to warn of the dangers of drugs and guns. Ferguson said Baker made those visits voluntarily.
“He said to me that he loves his country, and he believes in the system,” Ferguson said. “Sometimes, that’s hard to hear coming from a client. But he does believe in that, and he thinks that, ultimately, he’s going to get a fair result.”
Ferguson said he believed Baker was still involved in the music scene before his arrest, and that he had also tried his hand at writing movie scripts. He said he spoke with Baker on Thursday, before speaking with a reporter from the Post. “He wanted there to be something in there about him apologizing to his family, teammates, the community, the fans and, in particular, the people in Toronto,” Ferguson said. “He said that they were a l ways ver y good to him, and that he’s very sorry for all of this.”