Billie Gillespie and his trail of tears

Billie Gillespie is one of all of sports' most interesting characters. I first encountered him when he was the flamboyant coach of Texas A & M, at that point he was certainly one of the up and coming coaches. It looked like he had made the precipice of coaching when he became the head coach of the storied program at the University of Kentucky basketball program. However, as we all know it went downhill fast, and you may look at Billie, like I do now, as an average coach who has had some very good players.

But this blog is not to be about Billie and his coaching prowess or lack thereof, this will be about Billie's interaction with the law, specifically the law's regarding dui, something near and dear to me. Before I became a misplaced buckeye, here in the land of 10,000 lakes, I was a practicing attorney in the fine state of Ohio. I did many kinds of criminal defense cases, but I sort of specialized in dui cases, I might even be so obnoxious to say I was kind of good at them. To me DUI cases are some of the most important, not only for their prevalence, but also their effect. Almost all of us knows someone affected by a drunk driver, and too many drivers have gone driving while drunk.

I know from my experience very rarely do you get caught the first time you drive drunk. My clients were habitual abusers of alcohol, and they hurt themselves, their families, and the communities they lived in. I was a good attorney, but even I, do not know if I could do what Billie Gillespie got in the district county court of Anderson County, Kentucky. Now I do not hold myself out to be a licensed attorney in Kentucky, but in Ohio this same result would be highly unusual, and in some counties impossible. Here is what our fine Mr. Gillespie got for driving drunk: Fines and Court Costs, a 30 day suspension of his license, and an agreement to do a driver's education course. ARE YOU KIDDING ME! Now, before you say that I am being much too hard on fine Mr. Gillespie, let's look at his fine driving record. This is the third time he has been afoul of law as it relates to drinking and driving; back in 1999, while he was an assistant to Bill Self , he was charged with DUI, and pled down to reckless driving, and in 2003 he was charged with DUI, but then a special prosecutor decided to dismiss the charges for lack of evidence.

The county attorney in Anderson County, Kentucky gave a statement talking about how he was treated like anyone else. I doubt every single part of that statement. The real problem I have here is that this guy was sentenced as if he didn't have priors. Now here is some info for the non lawyers out there,(all of the following is according to Ohio Law or would be true to the extent Ohio Law and Kentucky Law are the same) it is true that a judge/jury cannot use prior arrests, charges, or convictions to prove that you committed a present crime, but once you plead guilty to that the judge can and in my opinion should, use all information given to him or her to decide what the appropriate penalty is. So either the judge didn't know about all of this, and in that case, the attorneys should be sanctioned for not giving the judge all of the relevant info, or the judge knew, and apparently disregarded a clear public safety concern in the attempt to help out a celebrity coach.

If Billie Gillespie were my client not only would he be on probation with some time over his head to illustrate to all of us that he can actually drink without driving, but because of his history, I would insist he successfully complete an impatient alcohol program. This man has shown himself to be a menace to himself, his family, his community, and everyone in his alcohol fueled path. I can't even count the number of times my client's have been upset when they are not treated like another person was treated in the judicial system. It is cases like this , that make my job very difficult, because if Billie Gillespie was treated like everyone else, either I am never driving through Kentucky again, because it is apparently a haven for drunk driving imbeciles, or he was not treated like everyone else, that his case is one of many in which the few are given the opportunities that the many are not.

Billie Gillespie felt he had the right to drink his way all the way to his car, and make us all pay for his sorrows in terms of what he could have done. How many people have to be hurt, how many families destroyed, before you finally stop Billie? It was Billie Gillespie's trail of tears that led him to get into that car that evening, but the trail of tears he could have left that night haunts me. I wonder how many sleepless nights he has?

As always, keep sports on your mind and the law on your side.

The Sports Law Blogger
http://www.sportslaw-sportslaw.blogspot.com

I also want to give credit to the ap article in which I got the particulars about Billie Gillespie's prior charges from Jeffrey McMurray's article.