April college hoops corruption trial could open window to significant revelations

Sixteen months have passed since federal officials held an elaborate press conference to announce the arrest of 10 men, including four college basketball assistant coaches, in a sweeping federal corruption case on basketball’s black market. Federal officials fueled the dramatic scene by declaring, “We have your playbook” and referenced the “dark underbelly” of college athletics.

Since the initial shockwaves of that bombshell news, however, there’s been little visceral change in the sport. The four assistants were fired, as was Louisville coach Rick Pitino, in the immediate aftermath. The subsequent legal churn has included three defendants being found guilty, but it’s come with few realtime reverberations through the sport.

With one federal case completed and two more upcoming, there appears to be an open window for new revelations about key figures in the sport, according to interviews with lawyers and legal experts. The April 22 trial of former agent runner Christian Dawkins and former Adidas consultant Merl Code could lead to some of the significant fallout within the sport that many expected back in September of 2017.

“In some ways, in the first trial, we skipped to the end of the movie,” said Stephen L. Hill Jr., a partner at Dentons in Kansas City and former U.S. Attorney who prosecuted the Myron Piggie case. “Here, with the help of coaches who pled guilty and documents and evidence that allegedly proves the allegations, the jury is going to be taken through literally the entire story from the opening scene to the end.”

Steve Haney, who represented Christian Dawkins in the first trial and will again in April, explained the difference between the trials and defense strategies in a phone interview with Yahoo Sports. Haney said the nature of the first trial led to few factual disputes. Former Adidas executive Jim Gatto was represented by Willkie Farr & Gallagher, a white-shoe New York law firm that based its resoundingly unsuccessful defense around the legal theory that no crime was committed.

In the first trial, essentially, the defense argued futilely that breaking NCAA rules didn’t equate to breaking federal law. “The challenge of the first case,” Haney said, “was that there were no facts to argue.”

Dawkins, Code and Gatto will be sentenced on March 5 after being found guilty of felony fraud charges in the first trial. In the upcoming trial, which promises to be completely different, Dawkins and Code both face multiple felony bribery charges. Both the prosecution and defense are expected to present a bevy of evidence, which would lead to less argument over theory and more discussion of facts and actions. That’s expected to include more documents, wiretaps and witnesses than were called in the first case.

Still lingering over the sport of college basketball are the wiretaps from the government intercepting 4,000 phone calls and thousands of documents, including emails and text messages. Part of the defense will be showing that Dawkins didn’t engage in a widespread scheme to bribe coaches, which could involve bringing in head coaches as witnesses to show that Dawkins didn’t attempt to bribe them. “We’re going to aggressively pursue witnesses we deem relevant,” Haney said.

Haney refused to discuss which coaches or how many, as he said he wanted to honor the protective order in place by the court. But there’s an expectation that coaches known to be on wiretap – including Arizona’s Sean Miller and LSU’s Will Wade – could be subpoenaed. Another obvious subpoena candidate is Andy Miller, the once-prominent NBA agent who was Christian Dawkins’ boss at ASM Sports Management.

Yahoo Sports reported last year that more than 20 different schools were tied through documents to Dawkins and ASM through payments to players back when he worked for Miller. (Since the initial story, Miller has been de-certified and is no longer allowed to represent NBA players.)

The witnesses and evidence that could be entered will likely come down to Rule 401 of the Federal Rule of Evidence. Judge Edgardo Ramos will determine whether a witness or evidence “has any tendency to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence.”

In the initial trial, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan didn’t allow the sport and the shady practices that have been pervasive for decades to be put on trial. He continually dismissed arguments about the economics of the NCAA and broader context involving the shady dealings of shoe companies other than Adidas.

But this case appears different. In proving Code and Dawkins didn’t commit bribery, the mechanics of how bribes and payments work in the sport will inherently be raised. (Code’s lawyers declined comment.) According to Hill, that will lend itself to more detail.

“When you fight about the facts, the tendency is for the trial to become very granular,” Hill said. “With lots of questions like, ‘What did you do next?’ ‘He handed me the money.’ ‘What did he say?’ ‘Thanks.’ ”

He added: “Because of the way the defense strategies are being forecasted, you’re still going to have different evidence that goes to the jury and is more detailed. I think that has the potential for a lot of new information coming out that wasn’t in the indictment.”

Three assistant coaches tied to this case have already pled guilty – Lamont Evans (South Carolina and Oklahoma State), Tony Bland (USC) and Emanuel “Book” Richardson (Arizona). They are all believed to have agreed to non-cooperation deals, which means they are not under obligation to testify for the government.

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