No charges to be filed in racial harassment of Utah women’s basketball team in N. Idaho
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Coeur d’Alene city attorneys have declined to charge an 18-year-old suspected in the racial harassment of the University of Utah women’s basketball team during March Madness, citing lack of probable cause based on free speech.
The suspect, who is still a Post Falls High School student, admitted to harassing the team during interviews with police, according to a Coeur d’Alene prosecutor’s charging decision document.
On March 21, about 100 members of Utah athletics walked down Sherman Avenue from the Coeur d’Alene Resort — where they were staying during NCAA Tournament play in Spokane — to get dinner at Crafted Tap House + Kitchen downtown. They had a 5:30 p.m. reservation for around 90 people, according to restaurant manager Junior Mujtaba.
Utah team donor Robert Moyer reported the harassment to police two hours after the incident. In the report, he said people inside multiple lifted pickups and a “souped-up car” yelled racial slurs, including the N-word, at the nonwhite players as the drivers revved their engines. On the walk back from dinner, the group appeared to have been waiting for the team, Moyer reported, with the vehicles speeding up and slowing down while hurling slurs.
The prosecutor’s document, which includes the Coeur d’Alene police investigation, said there was surveillance of lifted trucks driving by and revving engines around the time the team was walking to dinner, but no evidence to support that the occupants of the trucks were yelling racial slurs.
More evidence supports the use of racial slurs when the team was walking back from dinner, the documents said. Footage captured a silver passenger car driving past the team, with someone inside the car shouting multiple racial slurs and threatening anal sex, the document said. A female voice is also heard in the audio shouting for someone to call the police.
Five witnesses corroborated someone in the car yelling the racial slurs. The Post Falls student originally tried to retract his confession of the racial slurs and blame another passenger in the car, according to the prosecutor’s document.
Moyer described the group’s actions and hateful language as “aggressive.”
“Some of us didn’t realize what had happened until we got to the restaurant and people are just like … . One was in tears,” he said.
The University of Utah declined to comment Monday.
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The incident did not become publicized until after Utah lost to Gonzaga University in the tourney in Spokane the following Monday. It grew into a national story, sparked outrage from Coeur d’Alene leaders and others across Idaho, and brought negative attention to the city.
On Monday afternoon, Coeur d’Alene Mayor Jim Hammond said he was disappointed to hear there would not be charges filed, or an alternative punishment.
“I’m disappointed that there isn’t some kind of accountability,” Hammond said. “I’m not going to second-guess the prosecutor who made that decision, but I’m disappointed there’s not some form of community service that child can perform to be held accountable.”
Hammond said he hopes the person’s parents do what they can to hold him accountable and make it clear the ramifications of his actions. He wants the city to be known as an area where people are treated with respect, and worries the decision not to file charges will send the wrong message.
“The concern that I have is, I don’t want the message to be that it’s OK to behave like that, that it’s OK to treat people like that,” Hammond said. “Because it’s not.”
Chief Deputy City Attorney Ryan Hunter said he explored charging the perpetrator with disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct or malicious harassment, but ultimately found that only conduct is regulated under Idaho law, not speech.
“What (he) said was incredibly offensive,” Hunter wrote, but a legal assessment can stand only when evaluating when, where and how it was said. The only “justifiable outrage,” he wrote, is the word that was said.
Prosecution under the law would fail due to the First Amendment and because the content of the word would have to be excluded during a jury trial, according to the document.
Coeur d’Alene Capt. David Hagar declined to comment on the charging decision and said the investigation speaks for itself.
This story was originally published May 6, 2024 at 5:39 PM.