Police expected to release more info on Roethlisberger sexual assault allegation
By Rhonda Cook and Bill Rankin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Milledgeville authorities are planning to release more details Monday afternoon about the allegation that Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger may have sexually assaulted a Georgia College & State University student last week.
The football star was interviewed Friday and allowed to leave the state. Since then he has hired veteran Atlanta defense lawyers Ed Garland and Don Samuel. On Monday, Samuel confirmed that his firm already has consulted with Roethlisberger and interviewed some witnesses in the case.
Samuel said he would have no further comment.
Police said the woman reported that she was "sexually assaulted or sexually manipulated" by a man she described as 6-foot-5 and 241 pounds. She did not name Roethlisberger, but the two were seen at “multiple establishments” in Milledgeville late Thursday, according to police.
Police interviewed Roethlisberger, 28, but he was not charged. He has since left Georgia, where he has a home on Lake Oconee near Milldegeville.
(Couch Potato edit -- the rest of the crap below just concerns the lawyer and his previous celebrity clients, nothing to do with Ben. You can stop reading here if not interested in the past stuff)
Garland and his firm have represented several high-profile sports stars and entertainers in criminal cases.
In 2000, Garland represented Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis, who was charged with murder in a Buckhead street fight after a night of post-Super Bowl celebrating. In mid-trial, on June 5, 2000, Fulton County prosecutors dropped the murder charges against Lewis, allowing him to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge.
Just weeks after the Ray Lewis case ended, Garland was retained by another Baltimore Raven, Atlanta native Jamal Lewis, who was accused of a federal drug conspiracy.
Federal prosecutors said running back Jamal Lewis, then-reigning NFL Offensive Player of the Year, with involved in a drug conspiracy in the now-demolished public housing complex Bowen Homes and along the stretch of road once named Bankhead Highway. Prosecutors said Jamal Lewis stepped into the middle of a federal investigation when he made a cellphone call to introduce a childhood friend to a woman he didn’t know was an FBI informant posing as a drug trafficker. He pleaded guilty four years later to a misdemeanor, using a cellphone to make a drug transaction, and was sentenced to four months in a minimum-security prison, which was served in the off-season.
Another Garland client, former Atlanta Thrasher Dany Heatley, was charged with vehicular homicide in 2003 but pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in the car crash that killed a teammate. Heatley's speeding black Ferrari 360 convertible was ripped in half when it crashed into a brick pillar and black iron fence at The Plantation at Lenox in Buckhead on Sept. 29, 2003. Heatley and teammate Dan Snyder were ejected and Snyder was killed.
Prosecutors said Heatley was not drunk when he crashed, so they agreed to Garland’s proposal that the hockey player plead guilty to a lesser crime. Snyder’s family approved the agreement, which also limited Heatley to driving a six-cylinder car at no more than 70 mph.
Garland also was one of the attorneys rapper T.I. retained when he was arrested in Midtown Atlanta just hours before the 2007 B.E.T. Awards when he tried to buy automatic weapons and a silencer from an undercover agent.
T.I., whose legal name is Clifford Harris, pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to 1,000 hours of community service that involved telling kids and fans not to emulate his old lifestyle of drugs, guns, gangs and violence. Then he was to spend a year and a day in prison, a sentenced he has completed.