ASSAULT CHARGES Youth coach refuses to take plea bargain

He is accused of telling an 8-year-old to hit an autistic teammate with a baseball.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
UNIONTOWN, Pa. -- A youth baseball coach charged with hiring an 8-year-old boy to carry out an attack on his autistic teammate for $25 this summer will stand trial next year after rejecting an offer for a plea bargain.
Mark Downs Jr., 27, refused to throw himself at the mercy of the court yesterday after Fayette County District Attorney Nancy Vernon offered him a general plea agreement that would have allowed a judge to decide the amount of jail time he would receive in return for a guilty plea.
Downs, of Dunbar, is charged with two counts of criminal solicitation to commit aggravated assault, corruption of minors, conspiracy to commit simple assault and recklessly endangering another person.
The criminal solicitation to commit aggravated assault carries a maximum 10-year sentence, and the corruption of minors charge has a maximum five-year sentence. Both charges also carry substantial fines.
Downs' refusal paves the way for a May 1 beginning of his trial, which has already drawn the attention of Dateline NBC, ABC's "Good Morning America," Sports Illustrated, "Inside Edition" as well as news stations in Japan.
"This trial is going to be a circus," said Thomas Shaffer, Downs' attorney. "I spent $850 on my cell-phone bill on top of the 1,200-minute plan I already pay for just answering phone calls."
Police reports, testimony
Police say Downs told Keith Reese, 8, of Uniontown, on June 27 that he would give him $25 to hurl a baseball at 9-year-old Harry Bowers Jr., his autistic teammate, as a part of a midsummer plot to bench Harry because he was one of the worst players on the team.
Keith later testified at a preliminary hearing that after he hit Harry in the groin with a ball, Downs told him "to go out there and hit him harder."
Jennifer Bowers, Harry's mother, testified Downs told her Harry should sit out the remainder of the team's playoff game because "the balls must be after him."
Shaffer said Downs was misinterpreted after telling his players in jest that he would give them $25 to hit an umpire with a ball.
Shaffer said much of the evidence that supposedly links Downs to the intentional "hit" is contradictory. He said the parents have changed the dollar amount of the alleged bribe several times and that Harry's mother took her son to the hospital five days after the event.
The R.W. Clark Youth Baseball League, which runs the youth league in Fayette County, investigated the matter, but it did not substantiate the claims.
After news broke of the alleged plot, sports columnists across the country decried Downs' behavior as reprehensible. The New York City newspaper Newsday went as far as to name him the 10th worst sportsman on its annual list of 12 known as the Dirty Dozen.