ATHENS — If Georgia football player Sanders Commings faces any disciplinary action over the incident that resulted in his arrest last month, it likely will come from the school before he goes before a Clarke County judge.
Commings, a rising senior and starting cornerback, was arrested Jan. 21 by Athens-Clarke County Police and jailed on charges of domestic violence/simple battery. He allegedly hit his girlfriend during a late-night argument in downtown Athens, according to police.
Two other defensive backs recently dismissed by Georgia are headed to junior colleges with the hopes of possibly returning to play for the Bulldogs in 2013. People with direct knowledge of the situation confirmed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the players were dismissed for stealing cash from at least one teammate.
Nick Marshall enrolled at Garden City (Kan.) Community College and Chris Sanders at Georgia Military College in Milledgeville, according to their respective high school coaches.
Commings has a March 22 arraignment scheduled in Athens-Clarke County state court. However, the AJC learned that the incident has been under investigation by UGA’s Office of Student Conduct since Jan. 23 and likely will be dealt with on a university level before the legal process runs its course. Commings’ victim, a woman with whom he supposedly has lived “off and on for three years,” also is a UGA student.
“Our process usually unfolds quite a bit faster than the criminal process,” said Kris Stevens, UGA’s director of student conduct. “We work independently of the court system.”
According to documents obtained by the AJC through a Freedom of Information Act request, the incident is being investigated as a possible violation of UGA conduct regulation 3.3 for “physical abuse.” Commings was informed via an intra-campus letter from Stevens dated Jan. 23 that he is under investigation for “physical abuse, physical intimidation, coercion, and/or other conduct that threatens or endangers the health or safety of another person or violates a legal protective order.”
A violation of the conduct code can result in expulsion, suspension, probation, reprimand, restitution, community service or various restrictions. It can be resolved via “informal agreement” or through a hearing of the student judiciary.
Stevens said he is not permitted to discuss specifics of an open case other than to confirm that a student is being investigated and explain the process.
“We try to talk to as many witnesses that we can identify and will speak to us about the incident,” he said. “Ultimately we’ll look at all the facts and make a determination whether or not to move forward with it.”
Witness interviews conducted by UGA reveal a different scenario than the one described in police reports the day Commings was arrested. Arrest warrants and police reports based on the victim’s accounts describe Commings as having struck his girlfriend “in the mouth with a fist.”
Statements given by former Bulldogs football player Jeremy Longo and UGA student Kyle Green, who were with Commings at the time of the incident, claim Commings did not strike the victim. Both men said the victim confronted Commings at the end of a night of “bar hopping” and were trying to leave the downtown area. They claim the victim grabbed Commings by his jacket as he walked away and was yelling at him about “not spending time with her.”
Green said Commings “brushed her off” and “slightly pushed” his girlfriend. Longo said Commings “knocked her hand off and pushed her away, but not in a hard manner.”
Witness Christina Kyker, another witness interviewed, said she did not see the actual altercation but picked up the victim at a bar. Kyker said she did not see any marks on the victim, but noted that the victim was “very upset and crying and yelling.” Details of another witness account were not included in the documents regarding the case because he “did not want to become publicly associated with the investigation,” Stevens said in a Jan. 30 memo.
Interviews with Commings and his victim either have not been conducted or were not included in the documents obtained by the AJC.
Meanwhile, Commings’ legal issues likely won’t be resolved anytime soon. C.R. Chisholm, general solicitor for Athens-Clarke County, said he hasn’t begun to look at the case as he is still in the process of reviewing cases scheduled for arraignments later this month.
“Once I finish with those I’ll turn my attention to the March arraignments,” he said.
Chisholm said he is not aware of Commings’ case beyond “what I’ve read in the newspaper articles.”
“I don’t know a lot about the case actually,” he said. “I just haven’t had an opportunity to sit down and review it. It sounds like there might be some witnesses to it, which is unusual. Normally when we have family-violence cases we just have the victim. So that’s good.”
Chisholm said his records indicate that Commings has not hired an attorney. Commings and the UGA athletic association have declined comment on the incident.
As for the dismissed players, the high school coaches for Marshall and Sanders indicated that the door remains open for each player to return to the UGA program.
“I haven’t had any conversations with Georgia, but it’s my understanding [returning] is a possibility,” Ledford said of Marshall, a former AJC Super 11 player. “I’m not sure if it’s anything definite, but he has expressed interest in doing that.”
Said Franklin Stephens, Sanders’ coach at Tucker High: “My understanding is he should have an opportunity to come back to UGA. I thought it was great that coach Richt was going to have open-door policy about the possibility of returning.”
Marshall and Sanders were expected to contend for significant playing time in Georgia’s secondary next season. However, along with freshman wide receiver Sanford Seay, they were dismissed from the team and forced to withdraw from school for what UGA would describe only as a “violation of team rules.”
Indications are that Seay will not be allowed to return.
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