Criminal charges will not be filed against an 18-year-old man who officials say has admitted to yelling a racial slur directed toward members of the Utah women’s basketball team ahead of the team’s appearance in the NCAA Tournament in March.
In a six-page charging decision document dated May 3 and released Monday, Coeur d’Alene Chief Deputy City Attorney Ryan Hunter said that the suspect, a high school student in Idaho, confessed to shouting a racial slur and an obscene sexual statement toward to the group that included Utah players, staff members and other students.
The document, obtained by the Deseret News, explained that city attorneys in Couer d’Alene chose not to prosecute the man due to “insufficient evidence to establish probable cause” as well as a potential violation of the man’s First Amendment right to protected free speech.
University of Utah officials declined to comment further on the matter.
What did the police investigation into the incident determine?
The Utah women’s basketball team was staying in Couer d’Alene, Idaho, prior to its scheduled first-round game against South Dakota State in the women’s NCAA Tournament, as the Deseret News previously reported. The Utes played two NCAA Tournament games at the University of Gonzaga campus in Spokane, Washington, about a 35-minute drive from the Idaho town.
Two incidents occurred on March 21 not long after the team arrived in town, the university explained.
According to the charging decision document, a police report filed that night by university booster Robert Moyer claimed two lifted pickup trucks revved their engines and sped by while shouting a racial slur at the university’s group as it walked toward Crafted Tap House + Kitchen for a dinner reservation, then harassed the group again as it left the restaurant and returned to the Couer d’Alene Resort, where the team was staying.
A three-week investigation by Couer d’Alene police established a timeline of events that night and video evidence confirmed that an individual in a sedan shouted a racial slur, Hunter wrote.
The police, through their investigation, determined the identities of the four occupants in the vehicle and the 18-year-old in question confessed to saying both the racial slur and obscene statement, according to the charging decision document.
The Couer d’Alene city attorney’s office considered three potential criminal offenses against the man, including disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct and malicious harassment, according to the document.
Hunter wrote there was “insufficient evidence” to establish malicious harassment — or “with a specific intent to intimidate or harass any specific person” — in the man’s conduct. As for the other two charges, he also concluded the 18-year-old’s actions didn’t rise to the level of pursuing prosecution under state or city criminal code.
“What has been clear from the very outset of this incident is that it was not when or where or how (the accused) made the grotesque racial statement that caused the justifiable outrage in this case; it was the grotesque racial statement itself,” Hunter wrote.
“Thus, any attempt to prosecute (him) for either disturbing the peace or disorderly conduct would inevitably rely on the content of what he said to establish either crime, which would clearly violate (his) free speech rights as contemplated under both the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and … the Idaho Constitution.”
Hunter also said the city attorney’s office “shares in the outrage sparked by (the accused’s) abhorrently racist and misogynistic statement.”
“We join in unequivocally condemning that statement and the use of a racial slur in this case, or in any circumstance,” Hunter wrote. “However, that cannot, under current law, form the basis for criminal prosecution in this case.”
As for the pickup trucks, Couer d’Alene police gathered surveillance video from the area as part of their investigation and video surveillance showed three trucks making “significant noise while accelerating” in the vicinity of the restaurant, according to the document, though there was no evidence that anyone inside those trucks shouted a racial slur at the team’s traveling party.
“At this time, there exists no audio or video evidence to substantiate the initial report that several vehicles were revving their engines and speeding by in an intentional effort to intimidate and/or harass the U of U contingent as they traveled to or from dinner at Crafted,” Hunter wrote.
“However, although not captured in an audio recording, five credible eyewitness statements confirmed that someone shouted the N-word at a particular member of the U of U contingent during their walk to Crafted. Still, those accounts varied widely in the description of the vehicle and person(s) involved in shouting that racial slur, with the only uniformity as to the identity of the perpetrator being that it was a white male.”
Coeur d’Alene Mayor Jim Hammond told The Spokesman-Review he was “disappointed” upon finding out charges won’t be filed.
“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.”
What does this mean moving forward?
Utah coach Lynne Roberts first detailed the incident following the Utes’ loss to Gonzaga in the NCAA Tournament second round, telling reporters that the team switched hotels and worked with Gonzaga and the NCAA on making that happen.
“(It was) incredibly upsetting for all of us,” Roberts said. “It was a distraction and upsetting and unfortunate. This should be a positive for everybody involved. It should be a joyous time for our program, and to have kind of a black eye on that experience is unfortunate.”
Spokane was hosting both the women’s and men’s NCAA tournaments that same weekend, and there was a regional volleyball tournament also in town, according to The Associated Press.
The three visiting teams in the women’s tournament all stayed in Idaho hotels, with Utah and UC Irvine housed in Couer d’Alene, according to the AP.
The university expressed its disappointment in staying in Couer d’Alene.
“As we continue to heal, we remain very disappointed in the decision to assign our team to hotels such a great distance from the competition site, in another state. We will work with NCAA leadership to make it clear that being so far removed from the site was unacceptable and a contributing factor to the impact of this incident,” the statement from the school read.
In the women’s NCAA Tournament, the first two rounds are played at a host site and aren’t set in stone until Selection Sunday the weekend before play starts.
NCAA Vice President for Women’s Basketball Lynn Holzman told the AP that the selection committee was scheduled to review the tournament’s format after the 2025 season. She has been pushing to move up the review to this year, according to the AP.
“That review would include the first four, first and second rounds and also an evaluation of the two-site regional format,” Holzman told the AP. “We want to look at the preliminary rounds of the championship and with the growth we’ve had the last few years I think we should move up that review to start in 2024.”