Scottie Scheffler's Lawyer Goes Off On Police For 'Interrogating' Star Golfer After Incident
On Wednesday, the Jefferson County attorney's office declined to pursue charges against PGA Tour star Scottie Scheffler. Scheffler was involved in an incident with a Louisville police officer prior to the second round of the PGA Championship and subsequently arrested.
Scheffler was originally charged with four offenses, including the felony charge of second degree assault of a police officer.
During a hearing, Jefferson County attorney Mike O'Connell told the judge: "Based upon the totality of the evidence, my office cannot move forward in the prosecution of the charges against Mr. Scheffler. Mr. Scheffler's characterization that this was ‘a big misunderstanding’ is corroborated by the evidence."
The dropped charges didn't stop Scheffler's attorney, Steve Romines, from going off during a press conference on Wednesday. A reporter pressed Romines on Scheffler's seeming confession in a video that surfaced Wednesday morning (but was posted originally on May 23).
In the video, an officer is speaking with Scheffler while the PGA Tour star sits in the back of a police car. The officer keeps pressing Scheffler to agree with his statements, which included things like "what happened is, you kept going, and you took him with you."
"Yes, sir," Scheffler replied repeatedly to the officer throughout the exchange.
Charges against Scottie Scheffler stemming from an incident prior to the second round of the PGA Championship were dropped on Wednesday, but that didn't stop his attorney Steve Romines from going off on how police handled the situation.
(Tim Heitman/Getty Images)
Well, Romines didn't appreciate the police speaking with Scheffler in the manner that they did right after the accident.
When a reporter presses Romines and says that Scheffler "admits he got impatient and went too far," Romines stops her and in a stern tone responds, "No, here's what happened. He is being interrogated after the most stressful situation of his life.
"And an officer is actually asking him leading questions and trying to get him to agree with him," Romines continues. "And that's why you don't talk to the police because they're going to try to put words in your mouth and that's exactly what they did.
"They are trying to get him to confess to something that he didn't do, and the video evidence shows he didn't do it."
The exchange is worth a watch:
This is terrific advice from Romines and he's correct. Scheffler's best course of action after the officer read him his Miranda rights would have been to say something like, "Respectfully, I'd like to speak with an attorney before saying anything about the incident."
However, Scheffler is clearly not used to speaking with police in this manner. He surely thought that if he explained himself, they would just let him go. But that's not what happened.
The good news for Scheffler is that nothing further will come from the situation. The charges have been dropped and that's the end of it. Still, he probably learned a very valuable lesson from the entire experience.