The Kevin Johnson Pie Saga Rolls On, At Taxpayer Expense
Sacramento’s not done with the Kevin Johnson soap opera after all: Sean Thompson, who hit the ex-NBA superstar in the face with a coconut cream pie at a September charity event and immediately took what the public now knows was a heinous physical beating from the disgraced now-former mayor, is going back to court.
The Sacramento District Attorney’s Office has already had one whack at Thompson, having tried him last month on a felony count of assaulting a public official. But that case ended in a mistrial after a two-week trial in Sacramento Superior Court, when jurors told the judge they were hopelessly hung on the fifth day of deliberations. After declaring a mistrial, Judge Robert Twiss made it clear he didn’t like Thompson’s act. “I do not think he has the potential for rehabilitation,” Twiss said, according to a report in the Mercury News. Well, the DA’s office announcedit would bring the unrehab-able pie thrower back to court, this time to face a reduced charge of misdemeanor assault.
The news that the city was putting Thompson on trial again reminded all Johnson watchers that his gifts as a polarizer remain as blatant as his hoops skills once were.
Commenters on the Sacramento Bee’s website were overwhelmingly against the decision. Some of the naysayers accentuated the time and tax money already spent prosecuting an offense that Thompson, an activist for the city’s homeless, claimed was political theater. Some asserted the legal authorities should have spent the same amount of effort investigating corruption and sexual abuse charges leveled through the The Kevin Johnson Pie Saga Rolls On, At Taxpayer Expense :
