Thursday, the University of Michigan announced that defensive lineman and team captain Mazi Smith was being charged with felony gun possession stemming from an October 7 incident. According to an Ann Arbor Police report, Smtih was pulled over the speeding at 9:35 a.m. on Oct. 7 without a driver’s or CPL license in his possession.
“Smith, the sole occupant of the vehicle, was found to be in possession of a handgun inside the vehicle without a valid CPL (concealed pistol license) and did not have his driver’s license at the time of the stop,” the Ann Arbor PD report states. “Smith was arrested at the scene, processed at the police station, and released pending Washtenaw County Prosecutor review.”
Okay, shit happens understandably. Smith was in the process of getting his CPL and made a mistake carrying before the paperwork officially went through. Plus, who hasn’t been pulled over for speeding and/or forgotten their license at home? Despite the felony charge, none of this is actually a big deal in the grand scheme of things.
However, what is a big deal is the suspicious nature in which the Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit and the University of Michigan proceeded to handle this situation.
First, take the statement released by Savit where he addresses the timeline surrounding charges being filed against Smith:
“The timeline for charging on this case was unremarkable,” Savit said. “The incident involving Mr. Smith occurred on Oct. 7. He was not arrested at the scene, and we received a police report on Oct. 14. We approved the request for charges on Nov. 17, and the warrant was ‘sworn out’ before a magistrate this week.
“This is an unremarkable timeline for cases that are submitted to us when a defendant is not in custody. If a defendant is in custody (arrested at the scene), we need to process cases faster, within 48 hours, and we have a separate queue set up to review in-custody cases. But when a defendant is not in custody, authorization of charges generally moves slower, and the timeline here was not remarkable.”
What’s remarkable though is Savit provides an almost completely different statement than that of the Ann Arbor Police, not to mention some pretty recent precedent involving college athletes getting pulled over and charged with felony gun possession.
Savit as mentioned said that Smith wasn’t arrested while the police not only said he was arrested at the scene but released that same day “pending a Washtenaw County Prosecutor review”, a review that took almost two months to complete. Meanwhile, at the time, Smith was still able to hop on a plane and make it in time for Michigan’s game against Indiana the following day.
Meanwhile, Eastern Michigan basketball star Emoni Bates was arrested not far from where Smith was arrested less than a month prior on a similar charge. Bates was pulled over on September 18 in Superior Township for a traffic violation.
Washtenaw County deputies pulled over Bates, who this year transferred to Eastern Michigan, for failing to stop at an intersection and found a firearm during the investigation, local TV station WXYZ-7 reported. The 18-year-old Bates was charged with carrying a concealed weapon and altering ID marks, per the arrest record, and taken into custody at the Washtenaw County jail.
The Athletic
Amazingly, not only did Bates spend a night in jail and not have the luxury of getting a “review” by the Washtenaw County Prosecutor but a plea deal was reached and the charges were ultimately dismissed on October 19, almost a month after the arrest.
So why did the Bates situation run through the system so much more quickly than that of Smith?
The same county with, a relatively same set of circumstances especially considering both Bates and Smith didn’t have any prior felony convictions. Not to mention the same prosecutor who further comes into question especially when you factor in his connection to the Univesity of Michigan (Savit is currently a professor at the University of Michigan Law School).
Do as I say, not as I do for the University of Michigan
Not only were the procedures of Washtenaw County prosecutor Eli Savit incredibly questionable and suspicious, but the same could be said for Jim Harbaugh, Warde Manuel, and the University of Michigan.
What seems typical is while Harbaugh and Manuel were on their moral pulpit calling for criminal charges against the Michigan State players involved in the tunnel incident, they were actively keeping quiet regarding a player on their own team facing felony gun charges.
And yes, what happened in the tunnel with the Michigan State players and what happened with Mazi Smith are not comparable in terms of the actions themselves. One incident had a very clear victim and the other didn’t. However, as much as people may want to compare the two, that’s simply not the point. What is the point is Jim Harbaugh and Warde Manuel being complete and total hypocrites. And as much as one may think that the charge against Smith was bullshit and/or completely unfair, Harbaugh and Manuel kept a lid on the incident for almost two months, conveniently enough after charges were filed in the wake of the Ohio State game all while making themselves unavailable to the media while coupling it with the Blake Corum drop.
But none of this is surprising.
Michigan has consistently played by another set of rules while the media has done little to hold them accountable. First, it’s incredible the University continues to get zero backlashes for the decades of alleged abuse surrounding Dr. Anderson and the possible complicity of Bo Schembechler. Even more recently the alleged cover-up of a sexual assault involving former kicker Brendan Gibbons.
It’s a noticeable pattern. One you can’t help but question every aspect surrounding it, including any larger conspiracy from the county prosecutor to Jim Harbaugh and the Athletic Department. The bottom line though is this could’ve and should’ve been easy. If Michigan addressed this in when it happened no one would’ve been talking about it today. Nor would anyone probably scoff at the idea of suspending Smith for a single game given the circumstances surrounding the incident.