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Published on Monday, 13 September 2010 19:13
It turns out that 7 is not a lucky number for former Chicago Sun-Times columnist & WMVP-AM radio host Jay Mariotti, as that is how many charges he is now facing.
As mentioned on
this site last week, Jay Mariotti, dodged a potentially career-killing bullet when the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office looked at the case surrounding his recent arrest and decided to not pursue the felony charges against Mariotti, feeling that evidence assembled made it seem more like a misdemeanor than a felony. The evidence against him was then turned over to the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office, for consideration of whether or not to bring up Mariotti on misdemeanor charges for the
August 21 incident.
Earlier this afternoon, the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office prosecutors decided to charge Jay Mariotti with seven misdemeanors in connection with the incident with his girlfriend, after looking over the physical evidence and eye-witness descriptions. The charges are two counts of domestic violence with injury, two counts of domestic violence, one count of false imprisonment, one count of vandalism (for damage done to the apartment building lobby), and one count of grand theft (for allegedly stealing his girlfriend's expensive purse and all contained within, including her car keys).
If convicted, each misdemeanor charge has a maximum penalty that includes a year in jail, plus hefty fines. Cases such as this rarely go trial and the defendant's consul most often arranges for a plea agreement that will contain no prison sentence, especially when the defendant has no prior record of violence.
Jay Mariotti is scheduled to be arraigned this Friday morning at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles.
Mariotti remains suspended from his two jobs. AOL's Fanhouse.com immediately suspended the online columnist after his arrest and will not comment yet if/when he will be reinstated. ESPN has not used Mariotti on their television show "Around The Horn" since his arrest. He was a regular contributor prior to his being arrested, including appearing on the show half a day earlier. ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz simply stated today, "We have no plans to use him at this time."
Jay Mariotti was a controversial columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times starting in 1991 until he abruptly quit the newspaper in 2008. Mariotti hosted a daytime sports talk show on WMVP-AM in 2004, until management asked him to leave after only 10 months, for refusing to tone down his inflammatory rhetoric, especially that which was aimed at Jerry Reinsdorf's teams, whose games were broadcast on that station.
Jay Mariotti is 51 years old and now lives outside of Venice, CA. His north-suburban Chicago home went under contract this summer and is awaiting closing.
