iNSIDE SCOOP: Suspend Stewart? No Way!

With all that is going on in the world of the NFL, somebody had to bring up NASCAR and whether it should suspend Tony Stewart now that the New York DA has given a grand jury the choice to bring charges in the Aug. 9 death of driver Kevin Ward Jr.

It was the Sporting News’ Jeff Owens, who has been at this a long time. His treatise on this subject is well-written and draws a reasonable conclusion.

What is the deal with sports and legal challenges lately? Stewart has not been charged or convicted of anything as yet, and I strongly suspect he won’t be, but remember who we are dealing with here: a grand jury.

It is said by attorneys everywhere that a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich if they so choose. They haven’t, to my knowledge, but I quit reading law my sophomore year in college when it became clear I wasn’t going to be a lawyer.

Grand juries are secret affairs where the only persons present are the judge, the jurors themselves and the government’s lawyers. The person whose case is before the grand jury enters the chamber without his or her own attorney present. Since they are used generally in capital cases, this takes on some huge implications if it’s you sitting in the box.

Grand juries are also made up of local citizens, who are supposed to be impartial and have little exposure to the details of the case. Is that possible today? If anyone walked by the TV set between Aug. 10 and today, chances are they would have heard detail ad nauseum, from everyone from ESPN to FOX to MSNBC to Entertainment Tonight!

The Internet? OMG. You generally see this kind of buzz only when a Kardashian is involved.

To me, a lifelong racer, this is fairly cut-and-dried. A young driver got ticked off after a racing accident, got out of his car, went down where angels should rightly fear to tread and was struck and killed. Had the driver of the car which hit young Ward been driven by anyone other than Stewart, I don’t believe we’d have heard about it, let alone be talking about grand juries and such. 

I know this to be true. Growing up, racing drivers died on a weekly basis, or almost weekly, and nobody cared. That isn’t meant to be ugly; it’s a fact. Even in the early 1980s, drivers died at the tracks, and unless it was someone who had raced at Indy or Daytona, there was hardly a blip on the radar.

We’ll see how all this plays out, but should NASCAR suspend Tony Stewart for a racing accident? 

No. 

This is not a political correctness issue, like the stuff going on in the NFL. It is a tragic and in my opinion unnecessary accident, one in which no one has been charged with anything. Should he be charged, whether it be manslaughter or criminal negligence, I still don’t think he should be suspended.

Why? Because it happened on the track and under unusual circumstances, and because to my mind it could happen to any driver, anywhere. 

Tony Stewart will pay for that instant the rest of his life. Kevin Ward Jr. already paid with his. 

Enough.