Plaxico Burress Should Be a Free Man

One day, he was as big a star in New York's sports galaxy as any. The next day, he was being jettisoned from it after being convicted of violating a federal law and faced with a possible jail sentence.

I'm not referencing Plaxico Burress just yet, however. I'm talking about Yankees owner George Steinbrenner back in 1974. The shipping magnate turned baseball owner was busted for making illegal contributions to President Nixon's 1972 campaign.

Steinbrenner, like Burress, agreed to a plea deal. Fourteen criminal counts against him were cut to one felony and a misdemeanor and The Boss wound up being fined $15,000 and never had to go behind bars. Fifteen years later, President Reagan, in one of his final acts, pardoned Steinbrenner.

Burress won't be so lucky, but he should be.

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The Steinbrenner and Burress cases aren't quite the same. Steinbrenner broke a federal law; Burress was convicted last week by a New York State court. Steinbrenner's offense was non-violent; Burress's offense was carrying a concealed and unregistered loaded gun into a public place and allowing it to fire, albeit accidentally, into his leg.

At the end of the day, though, both men inflicted pain only upon themselves. Both have expressed remorse every day since. They don't seem likely to attempt such foolishness again.

As Burress told ESPN's Jeremy Schaap on Monday for Tuesday's airing of E:60, "I look myself in the mirror every morning and I'm like, 'You got yourself into it. You've got to get yourself out of it, get your life back on track, get back to doing what you love to do.' Four or five years from now, down the road, I'll look back on it and say I was reckless. I made a very bad decision, and I'm suffering major consequences for them. I took away what I love to do most, which is play football. I lost my job. That's where I'm at right now."

Where Burress will be late next month is in a prison somewhere. Thirty-two years old, he is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 22 for two years. He can get out a few months early for good behavior, but there is no getting out of at least that much jail time unless executives in the State of New York step in.

That is one of the unfortunate differences for Burress' case when compared to Steinbrenner's. Burress broke one of our country's officious zero-tolerance laws. It demands mandatory sentencing. It sees every crime and criminal in the same light and, as a result, is absolutely unfair. Burress is its latest catch. He is not quite like a sea turtle entangled in a tuna net, but close.

Burress was one of the most-fined players in the NFL for behaving in a manner his superiors considered insubordinate, but he wasn't considered a menace to society until now. He was not one of those NFL stars with a criminal record that stood out as much as his playing statistics.

Burress was clean. He just wasn't smart. He did something really dumb -- it should rank up there with some teammate breaking an ankle by tripping over the dog at the house, not with the actions of some recidivist reprobate at Rahway.

That doesn't mean Burress should not be punished. He could have hurt someone other than himself. He should've been cognizant of what guns mean to black males like him in this country. As I've pointed out before in this space, gun violence is the No. 1 cause of death for black men in the age span that star black athletes like Burress make up. And while gun deaths for everyone else have been trending downward in our country for several years now, a study from Northeastern University released late last year showed that gun homicides involving black youths surged by more than 30 percent during a five-year period starting in 2002.

Burress would better serve as a role model to kids looking up to him by being out of jail and remaining a constant reminder of what can happen when you walk out the house with a gun tucked in your jeans like some glorified gangsta in a rap video (Rapper C-Murder was sentenced earlier this month to life for a murder. Rapper T.I.'s new CD debuted this month at No. 29 on the charts while he is serving a year for a felony weapons conviction.)

In jail, Burress and his story of stupidity will be easily forgotten.

This would've been better left to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to handle alone. He could've acted as the old baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn did with Steinbrenner after Steinbrenner's conviction: suspend him from the game for a couple of years. (Steinbrenner was suspended from baseball a second time for paying a gambler to get information on Dave Winfield, who was suing Steinbrenner. Steinbrenner eventually was reinstated.)

I think I'm easily in the majority of people who never pulled the covers up at night worried about Burress being outside my home lurking down a dark alleyway. I think I'm among a similar overwhelming majority that won't feel any safer late next month knowing that he is behind lock and key.

In jail, Burress and his story of stupidity will be easily forgotten.Burress's case is why the American Bar Association has long stated that it is against mandatory sentencing in the criminal justice system. It first stated so way back when Steinbrenner was being convicted in 1974, when it adopted a resolution opposing "in principle, legislatively imposed mandatory minimum prison sentences ..." The ABA consistently has urged lawmakers "to authorize sentencing courts to impose a range of available sanctions, specifying maximum but not mandatory minimum sentences."

If I understand the law, President Obama can't pardon Burress because presidential pardons are reserved for federal offenses.

New York Governor Paterson can't pardon him, either, because there isn't some unknown proof of innocence or other mitigating circumstance.

All that can be done to spare Burress is to grant him a commutation, or reduction, of his sentence. So, no matter, we won't be seeing Burress for awhile and neither will his wife and children.

Burress should've thought about this consequence before he walked out of the house with a gun under his belt, but the rest of us should think about the priorities of our justice system in the aftermath.