Originally, Ray Lewis was charged with murder in 2000, but he quickly had those charges reduced. The Baltimore Ravens player pled guilty to obstruction of justice and agreed to testify against his two friends, Reginald Oakley and Joseph Sweeting, who were also charged with the murders, per ABC News.
The two other defendants stood trial for the murders of Jacinth Baker and Richard Lollar stemming from the Super Bowl party brawl. Eventually, Oakley and Sweeting were both acquitted of the murder charges. Nobody else confessed to the stabbings, and the case was left unsolved. “My nephew was brutally beaten and murdered, and nobody is paying for it,” a member of one of victim’s [Baker] family members told USA Today in 2013 while reflecting on the trial. Although Lewis avoided the murder charges, the NFL levied a $250,000 fine against the linebacker for failing to cooperate fully with authorities. “In doing so, he put his own livelihood and reputation needlessly at risk, and he caused great harm to other NFL players and to the league,” the league’s then-commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, said in 2000, per ABC News.
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That was far from the end of the ordeal for Lewis, as questions remained about his involvement in the attacks. Baker’s family filed a wrongful death suit against Lewis in 2003, and Smith’s family filed their own lawsuit in 2004. Both families were awarded undisclosed amounts from the NFL star, per CBS Sports. The most pressing question was what happened to the clothes Lewis wore that night.
