Dak Prescott will begin training camp for his rookie season with the Dallas Cowboys Thursday with no criminal proceedings clouding the occasion.
Starkville Municipal Judge Rodney Faver acquitted the former Mississippi State quarterback of misdemeanor DUI and speeding charges Wednesday, following a more than two-hour trial.
“He’s glad to have this over with,” Prescott’s attorney Jay Perry of Starkville said after the verdict. “He loves Starkville. He still considers this one of his homes. But he’s glad to be able to close this chapter.”
City police officers arrested Prescott at about 12:30 a.m. March 12, following a traffic stop on University Drive in the Cotton District. Initially stopped for driving 41 mph in a 25 mph zone, Prescott admitted to having a beer earlier in the day.
Following an onsite breathalyzer test that confirmed the presence of alcohol, DUI enforcement officer Momcilo Babic subjected Prescott to field sobriety tests before taking him to the police station for booking. Once at the station, he unsuccessfully attempted an Intoxilizer 8000 breath test twice. His first sample was “invalid.” The second sample registered “insufficient.”
Officer Donte Thomas initiated the traffic stop, though he was not certified to run radar at the time. Babic and fellow DUI enforcement officer Drew Jones arrived at the scene later.
In a pretrial hearing July 21, Thomas testified he didn’t smell alcohol when he made the stop, and Prescott didn’t show any signs of being intoxicated.
On Wednesday, however, Babic testified he smelled “strong intoxicant” on Prescott’s breath. He added Prescott had bloodshot, glassy eyes and exhibited clear problems with his balance during the field sobriety tests and when walking through the police headquarters awaiting booking.
“From the moment I approached the vehicle, I observed clues that I am trained to look for as a DUI enforcement officer,” he said, adding those clues led him to believe Prescott was “not just impaired, but highly intoxicated.”
Perry presented more than an hour’s worth of video evidence from dash, body and police headquarters surveillance camera footage he argued showed Prescott walking and talking without impairment during and after the stop.
It also captured several exchanges between Prescott and Jones, where the officer complimented the quarterback’s “nice” Cadillac Escalade and chided him for cruising the Starkville bar scene just weeks before April’s NFL Draft, in which the Cowboys selected Prescott in the fifth round.
In the video, Jones insists Prescott is intoxicated, saying “This is what we do (as DUI enforcement officers).
He then makes several references to “being an MSU alum” himself but that he couldn’t understand why Prescott would risk driving drunk in Starkville.
“Anyone would have volunteered to take you home,” Jones said at one point. “I was hoping you weren’t intoxicated when I walked up.”
“Damn Starkville. Damn this place,” he added in an apparent attempt to advise Prescott to stay away from the local bar scene.
Perry said the video showed his client’s composure throughout the entire process.
“I feel like the video speaks for itself,” Perry told Faver during closing arguments. “There were ample examples of dexterity. He caught a cell phone that was tossed to him from across (the booking) room. … And despite being pressed and pressed and pressed in the booking room, he remained calm.”
City prosecutor Caroline Moore called Babic as her sole witness Wednesday, and during her closing statement, deferred to Faver’s judgment without offering an opinion.
Moore would not comment to The Dispatch after the verdict.
Faver did take issue with another local attorney’s reaction to the verdict. He gaveled down Brace Knox, who was watching the trial from the gallery, for “jumping up and down” as the acquittal was rendered.
“No outbursts in the courtroom,” Faver yelled from the bench. “You’re an attorney. You should know better. … I could have you sanctioned for that.”
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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