Earlier this week, police reportedly recommended that the San Diego City Attorney pursue Chargers cornerback Antonio Cromartie on charges of assault with a deadly weapon.
But now they’ve apparently changed their minds.
“Based on our investigation we have determined that there is not enough evidence to indicate that a crime occurred,” San Diego Police Department spokesperson Monica Munoz said, per 10news.com. “The case has been inactivated and will not be sent anywhere for prosecution.”
Cromartie had admitted to throwing a bottle of champagne, but he claimed that it had slipped out of his hands. Apparently, someone decided that Cromartie is telling the truth or, alternatively, that there was no way to show beyond a reasonable doubt that Cromartie was lying.
It’s the second time in less than three months that a Chargers player was not prosecuted for assault after high-profile incidents. In September, linebacker Shawne Merriman allegedly roughed up and falsely imprisoned television personality Tila Tequila Nguyen, but San Diego prosecutors opted not to proceed with charges.
In this case, it’s hard not to wonder whether local prosecutors bounced the case back to the police and asked them to claim the decision as their own, given the possibility that two consecutive cases involving the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in a manner that benefited the Chargers might have been viewed as evidence of a bias in favor of the local football team.