LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Kentucky basketball player Jules Camara was found
guilty of drunken driving on Tuesday, ending his hopes of returning to the
Wildcats this season.
The five-woman, one-man Fayette County jury heard nearly five hours of
testimony and deliberated for an hour before returning the verdict and imposing
a $200 fine.
Camara, a 6-foot-11 native of Senegal, was arrested in the early morning
hours of Sept. 3 after a Lexington police officer spotted him driving
erratically in the narrow circle drive of a south Lexington townhome community.
Officer John Ruzzene said he smelled alcohol in the car and on Camara's
breath. He then administered a series of field sobriety tests, which he said
Camara failed, and arrested him.
Camara refused a blood test at a local hospital and refused to answer any
questions at the jail until he had spoken to an attorney.
Under Kentucky's no-tolerance alcohol policy, Camara was suspended from the
team immediately following the arrest. With the conviction, he stands to lose
his scholarship but could return to the team next year.
Camara, dressed in a gray suit and red tie, displayed no emotion as Fayette
District Judge Maria Ransdell read the verdict. His attorney, Jim Lowry, told
the judge he would file a motion to appeal.
Following the verdict, Camara was hustled out of the courtroom into a
waiting sports utility vehicle. Neither Lowry nor prosecutor Denotra Gunther
made any comments to a courtroom full of reporters.
Kentucky Athletics Director Larry Ivy and Kentucky basketball coach Tubby
Smith could not immediately be reached for comment. Associate sports
information director Brooks Downing released a statement Tuesday night saying
the school would have no comment.
The prosecution argued that Camara obviously was intoxicated and that, after
being pulled over, he jumped into the back seat in an attempt to deceive the
arresting officer.
Ruzzene and officer Tim Ball also testified that one of two passengers in
the vehicle fled the scene while Ball was attempting to restrain a crowd of
onlookers.
The defense, however, produced a parade of witnesses that refuted many of
the officers' claims.
Michael Stewart, one of the passengers in the vehicle, testified that Camara
was not driving at a high rate of speed and did not come close to hitting a
parked car. He also testified that he watched Camara take the field sobriety
tests and saw nothing improper.
The other passenger, Bob Griffith, was accused by police of fleeing the
scene. But both Stewart and Griffith testified that Ball told Griffith to
leave.
"He told me `Get out of the car. I don't want to see your face,' "
Griffith said. "So I walked across the street, about 25 or 30 feet away, and
watched what was going on. I don't know why he told me to leave."
Several witnesses, including Camara, testified that he'd only had one beer
as he and several others, including Stewart and Griffith, watched the
Kentucky-Louisville football game at Griffith's apartment earlier that evening.
Several others testified that they saw never saw Camara drink anything at
Lexington's Two Keys Tavern following the game.
Camara said he jumped into the back seat of his rented car because he was
afraid of losing his scholarship and that he refused the blood test because he
did not want his parents to find out he had been drinking, which goes against
his family's religious beliefs.
Lowry suggested that Ruzzene may have been guilty of racial profiling and
pulled Camara over because he was a young black man driving a brand new car
with out-of-state license plates in a predominantly white section of town.
"Did (Ruzzene) pull him over for his race? I don't know," Lowry said
during his closing statement. "Is (Ruzzene) a racist? I don't know. Does that
create a reasonable doubt? It should."
Gunther, however, appealed to the jury's sensibilities.
"If you're not guilty, what do you have to fear?," she said. "Why jump in
the back seat? And why not take the blood test?"
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