REPORT: MARVIN WAS HOLDING THE GUN

Last week, Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham announced that Colts receiver Marvin Harrison would face no charges, for now, as a result of that April 29 incident in which someone used a gun owned by Harrison to fire bullets at another person. Abraham explained during a press conference that she did not have credible accounts of the incident. Shaun Assael and Peter Keating of ESPN The Magazine report that Abraham came to this conclusion despite having in her possession the statement of a second victim who claimed that Harrison was gripping a gun during his altercation with the person at whom the gun was fired. The statement from Robert Nixon corroborates the allegations of Dwight Dixon, who sued Harrison last year for injuries resulting from the shooting. But Nixon initially told police he didn’t know what happened, which might have fueled Abraham’s concern that Nixon would not hold up under cross-examination, and that a jury would not find that Harrison was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But why not hire an expert witness in urban culture, who could testify as to the “stop snitching” mentality and who could also explain that Nixon’s initial Sgt. Schulz routine was consistent with the notion that nothing good comes from cooperating with the police? Jurors never leave their common sense at the courthouse steps, and we think that there’s a good chance tjat enough of them would realize why Nixon might have been reluctant to point a finger at a high-profile guy who was (allegedly and brazenly) pointing a gun at someone else. “I’m pretty comfortable I know who fired the gun,” Abraham said last week. “But I’m not going to say because I don’t have the evidence.” Assael and Keating point out that the decision not to press charges could be revisited based on evidence uncovered in Dixon’s civil suit. Dixon’s lawyer says that he’ll try to take Harrison’s sworn deposition within the next six weeks. And as we’ve previously explained, that’s all the more reason for Harrison to settle the case. Because even though he’ll be able to invoke the Fifth Amendment while testifying in the civil case, the fact that he invoked the Fifth Amendment can be used against him in the civil proceedings. And since most civil lawsuits use only the 51 percent/49 percent “preponderance of the evidence” standard, Harrison’s chances of winning at trial would plummet if he opts to hide behind the Fifth Amendment. (And we’ll pre-empt the certain flood of comments explaining that O.J. Simpson couldn’t take the Fifth in his civil wrongful death trial by pointing out that his testimony came after he had been acquitted in the criminal case, making the Fifth Amendment irrelevant since he could not have been tried again on criminal murder charges, even if he had admitted killing his ex-wife and Ron Goldman in the civil case.) Bottom line? Harrison is hardly out of the woods -- and he still ultimately could be in the hoosegow.