Stoddard-Imari agrees to plea deal

2/13/08

By Andrew R. Koch
Sports Editor

Hornets basketball star Kali Stoddard-Imari agreed to a plea deal in Caledonia County District Court on Monday after being arraigned on an underage consumption charge.

Stoddard-Imari agreed to the deal with the State Attorney in exchange for what he describes as “a kind of probationary period.” This was his second alcohol offense in Vermont.

Early on the morning of Jan. 9, Stoddard-Imari was walking down Broad St. with his fiancée on their way home from a party when he was stopped by a state trooper. Stoddard-Imari admitted to the trooper that he had been drinking. According to Stoddard-Imari, the trooper then became very rude as he questioned him repeatedly before issuing him the underage consumption citation.

When he got home, Stoddard-Imari told his mother about what had happened, and she told him that she believed he was racially profiled. It’s unknown at this time if Stoddard-Imari raised this issue in court.

According to the State Attorney’s office in St. Johnsbury, the terms of Stoddard-Imari’s plea deal include a suspended 10 to 30-day jail sentence, pending completion of administrative probation. Administrative probation is the least-supervised form of probation from the Department of Corrections. This also means that Stoddard-Imari won’t have to go back to court again for this case. In order to fulfill the administrative probation, he will have to attend reparative board sessions (similar to Diversion) and complete them. The timetable for completing those sessions will be determined by the Department of Corrections.