Stefon's charges dropped
once more his life is a ball
always bouncing back
How is it that we keep thinking of Stefon Jackson as a scorer when clearly he rebounds better than perhaps any Miner ever?
Of course, we are talking about life, not basketball; although there is less difference for Jackson than for you or me. Which is why it is ultimately a good thing for Jackson that the charges against him for harboring a fugitive have been dropped.
Not because it gives a star jock another chance -- something we're all agreed happens enough to make everyone ill. It's because without that basketball ability, the fugitive in Jackson's apartment could easily have been Stefon. As it was, it was Stefon's cousin, Willie Harden, Jr.
Harden faces hard time if he's convicted of attempted murder, as will his friend and fellow fugitive Lamar Reid, accused of murder. How easily did those two just slip into El Paso, bringing with them all the baggage Jackson has said he wants to get rid of? How easily did they slip into Jackson's life?
How easily could Jackson have slipped into that life himself if forced to exchange his orange warm-ups for an orange jumpsuit?
If star jocks given chance after chance make folks ill, so should yet another kid without a proper family environment made bitter because he can't see past the nose on his face as he sits in prison.
If that kid has made a victim of others, so be it. But Stefon Jackson had no victims and doesn't need jail time, he needs basketball.
How about being separated from the Dark Side by a bouncing ball? I think I'd keep bouncing that thing wherever I went.
The Particulars: Our buddy, The Judge, appears to be right on target.
KLAQ Morning Show legal eagle, former judge and current trial lawyer Luis Aguilar, told us he didn't think the District Attorney's office would prosecute Stefon Jackson.
Aguilar says procedure dictates that an officer of the law must tell a person thought to be harboring a fugitive that the person they're after is a wanted man. You can't be charged for harboring if this is not told to you.
According to the report filed by the deputy to obtain Stefon's arrest warrant, it was not expressed to Stefon that Cousin Willie was a wanted man.
Interestingly, Judge Aguilar says officers of the law don't usually tell this to someone thought to be harboring a fugitive because that removes all legal options for the harborer. Officers would much rather that person be able to return and tell the fugitive the law is after him hoping the fugitive will run -- flushing him out, if you will. This is apparently what usually happens.
But, according to Aguilar, because Stefon wasn't told explicitly that Cousin Willie was a fugitive wanted for attempted murder DA Jaime Esparza's office would be left with no other option except dropping the charges.
That said, kudos to the sheriff's office for getting Harden and Lamar Reid.
The Bigger Picture: Let's not get bogged down in the nuts and bolts of how this or that should have been done. The rivets of an issue do not define it, they just help hold things in place for a closer look.
Say what you will about his decision to give his cousin and his cousin's friend a place to stay, but Stefon Jackson deserves the opportunity to stay out of the legal system.
Sure, you'd think that if you had gotten out of bad circumstances you'd be willing to do anything to stay away from what has held you down for so long. Even if that means throwing your own blood relative under the bus.
But could you really? Who has ever even been in a situation like this?
Not many of us.
A guy who goes through the shooting death of his brother then the death of his father from a gunshot wound suffered years earlier deserves to be free from a bad neighborhood's story that usually has an all-too-familiar -- and depressing -- ending. How Stefon Jackson has been so resilient through these and other trials is truly amazing.
There are also those high-minded individuals who would say that using Hoop Dreams to escape the mean streets is not a fantasy that anyone should support.
If you're that one-in-a-million man fortunate enough to be drafted by the NBA, well, it's not for nothing that you're called a "lottery pick". What lesson do we teach youngsters if we hold up as heroes these flawed individuals with athletic genes?
But that's not Stefon Jackson's concern.
The odds for basketball success are lottery-like against. But when the odds favor prison or death, what choice does a man have but to play?