My opinion of Jeff Ireland plunged lower than I thought possible when he drafted Jimmy Wilson. I touched on this in another thread last night but wanted to expand on it a little bit. Wilson was the one guy in decades who I wanted no part of, regardless of ability level. I posted frequently on true crime sites during that period and followed the Wilson case closely in real time, after reading about it on Montana websites that I had bookmarked years earlier during the Rick Tabish case. Tabish, who is from Montana, and Sandy Murphy were tried for the murder of Las Vegas casino executive Ted Binion.
Jimmy Wilson was acquitted primarily because he happened to kill a guy who was even more of a lowlife than he was. That was my opinion after following the case, and shared by countless posters on Montana message boards. Kevin Smoot was unavailable to provide his version, which is typical when you have a hole in your chest. Wilson's buddy Qwenton Freeman was an eyewitness who fled the scene -- and the state -- with Wilson after the shooting and refused to cooperate with authorities. Freeman is a charming sort who was later involved in a home invasion that included burglary, and a woman pistol-whipped and duct taped.
Wilson and Freeman were night time thugs in Missoula, well known to police. Unfortunately the related posts on the Missoulian website have long since been deleted. They were frequent and disturbing. A case like this becomes problematic when a court verdict goes the other way. Accusatory posts are deleted. Media is reluctant to investigate further, worried about legal matters. That's what I was told by one reporter when I contacted Miami media, furious that the Wilson case was not being examined, and we were being treated to the sob story about a nephew coming to the defense of his aunt, the rifle going off accidentally when it happened to be aimed at the deceased's chest. I'll bet.
I don't care what Wilson does on the field. He shouldn't be in the league, or have been on Miami's board. Ireland bragged that he talked to chancellors and athletic directors. I'm confident he didn't talk to prosecutors or police, the ones who said they were very familiar with Wilson.
http://www.grizzoulian.com/2007/06/articles/football/jimmy-wilson-no-stranger-to-the-police/
This isn't something I'll mention again. But if a video/audio of Wilson pulling the trigger and everything surrounding the incident, before and after, suddenly surfaced, I guarantee nobody would care whether he could cover, and his version wouldn't threaten to jive with the tape.