An 18-year-old man shouted a racial slur at members of the Utah women’s basketball team this spring but will not face criminal charges, a city prosecutor in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, wrote in a decision dated Friday.
The city’s chief deputy city attorney, Ryan Hunter, wrote in the charging decision that he declined to prosecute the 18-year-old because his statement did not meet the legal definition of malicious harassment or hate speech, and is therefore protected under the First Amendment.
A police investigation determined that the 18-year-old shouted the N-word at Utah players, some of whom were Black, as they walked to dinner on the night before their first NCAA tournament game in March.
‘Our office shares in the outrage sparked by (the man’s) abhorrently racist and misogynistic statement, and 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.’
A spokesperson for Utah athletics said the department had no comment on the decision.
Utah coach Lynne Roberts first revealed that her program had faced ‘several instances of some kind of racial hate crimes toward our program’ in late March, after her team’s loss to Gonzaga in the second round of the NCAA tournament. The Utes had been staying in Coeur d’Alene ahead of their NCAA tournament games in Spokane, Washington, but ultimately switched hotels after the incident, which was reported to police.
According to the charging decision, a Utah booster first told police that the drivers of two pickup trucks had revved their engines and sped past Utah players while they were en route to dinner on March 21, then returned and yelled the N-word at players.
A subsequent police investigation was unable to corroborate the alleged revving, though surveillance video did capture a passenger car driving past the Utah group as someone is heard yelling the N-word as part of an obscene comment about anal sex.
Police identified the four people who were traveling in the car, according to the charging decision, and the 18-year-old man initially confirmed that he had used the N-word as part of the obscene comment. The man, who is a student at nearby Post Falls High School, later retracted part of his earlier statement and said he shouted the N-word while another passenger made the obscene statement, according to the charging decision.
Hunter, the city prosecutor, wrote that the 18-year-old’s statement did not meet the threshhold for malicious harassment because he did not directly threaten to hurt any of the players or damage their property. It also did not meet the necessary conditions for disturbing the peace or disorderly conduct, he wrote, because those charges rely upon the nature of the statement rather than what was said.
He added that the man’s use of the N-word is protected by the free speech clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
‘I cannot find probable cause that (the 18-year-old man’s) conduct — shouting out of a moving vehicle at a group of people — constituted either Disturbing the Peace under state law or Disorderly Conduct under the (city’s) municipal code,’ Hunter wrote. ‘Instead, what has been clear from the very outset of this incident is that it was not when or where or how (he) made the grotesque racial statement that caused the justifiable outrage in this case; it was the grotesque racial statement itself.’
Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on social media @Tom_Schad.