Benson has been ordered to appear in front of Travis County Court Judge Elizabeth Earle at 9:30 a.m. that day in the Criminal Courts Building in Austin, Texas, to face charges of boating while intoxicated and resisting arrest stemming from an incident Saturday night.
Both charges are Class B misdemeanors punishable by six months in jail and/or a $2,000 fine. Benson, 25, denied being drunk, and his account of the incident varies greatly from the police version.
According to Benson, police pepper-sprayed him in the eyes without provocation and dragged him along the ground to the point he cried out for his mother, Jackie. But in an affidavit filed by the arresting officer with the Lower Colorado River Authority, Benson is described as cocky, combative and smelling of alcohol. Benson's attorney Brian Carney, who spoke to the Tribune on Sunday night, reiterated his client's innocence in an interview Monday morning on WMVP-AM.
"You want any client to be treated fairly," Carney said in the interview. "Someone who is a public figure, you don't want to be treated better than anyone else, but you don't want to be treated worse. What has happened in the past is [Benson] has been treated worse because there are more eyes, more attention on it. No one wants to admit they made a mistake."
A spokesman for the Lower Colorado River Authority, whose officers conducted the routine safety check and arrested Benson, declined comment on Benson's allegations.
Around Austin, more skepticism was directed toward the boat police than Benson, a former Texas Longhorns star, if callers to sports-radio station ESPN 1530 reflected local opinion. "Several boaters have called in and said the boat cops can be overbearing," host Chip Brown said in an e-mail.
Nonetheless, the incident muddies the waters for Benson's NFL future. If the Bears wait until after June 1 to cut Benson, they would save about $820,000 of the $3.365 million he counts against the 2008 salary cap—not that a team with $16.4 million in cap space has to worry about such details.
The NFL also has begun to look into the matter. That could result in a brief suspension or mandatory enrollment in the league's substance-abuse-monitoring program — or both.
SOURCE CHICAGOSPORTS
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