Angel Villalona Update

The Dominican Baseball guy wants to update the Angel Villalona story which I posted on a few weeks ago here.  Apparently he made a payment to the victim of the family which will take care of any civil action that the family may have seeked against Villalona. Andrew Baggarly posted this on his blog, citing an AP story. The Listin Diario daily newspaper in Santo Domingo also released this article. You can use this free translator from Verbatim Solutions if you want to read the Spanish article.

There is a good discussion at the Baggarly blog and at a blog post by Garrett Broshuis, a former teammate of Villalona.

This is a sticky situation. He made a payment to diffuse the possibility of later civil actions by the family. Some think this may admit guilt. I for one do not think this admits guilt. The justice system is not perfect in the US. In the DR, it is even less perfect (corruption, underfunding, and understaffng being major problems). I posted on my original post that there are witnesses from both sides (some saying he did it, others saying he was outside). I think extortion is a very high possibility, if friends of the victim thought they could get money out of Angel, they could have concocted a story.

And the prosecutor is also a politician, so he could be using this for his own gains. The things I find strange are that they have not recovered a gun, nor have they proven that Angel ever owned a gun, and that the only motive they have mentioned is that there was a fight over a seat. Not a very strong case in my opinion.

I said that everyone is innocent until proven guilty in the eyes of the Dominican Baseball Guy in the original post, and I continue to believe this. The latest news is that Angel has had his visa revoked by the US, so whether he is guilty or not this is not good news for him.