University of Miami Law School Institutional Repository University of Miami Entertainment & Sports Law Review 4-1-1990 The Relationship Between Criminal Liability and Sports: A Jurisprudential Investigation Wayne R. Cohen Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.law.miami.edu/umeslr Part of the Entertainment and Sports Law Commons Recommended Citation Wayne R. Cohen, The Relationship Between Criminal Liability and Sports: A Jurisprudential Investigation, 7 U. Miami Ent. & Sports L. Rev. 311 (1990) Available at: http://repository.law.miami.edu/umeslr/vol7/iss2/6 This Comment is brought to you for free and open access by Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Miami Entertainment & Sports Law Review by an authorized administrator of Institutional Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Cohen: The Relationship Between Criminal Liability and Sports: A Jurispr COMMENT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CRIMINAL LIABILITY AND SPORTS: A JURISPRUDENTIAL INVESTIGATION* Sports violence in major American sports increased dramati- cally throughout the twentieth century,1 with excessively violent conduct occurring in basketball, football, hockey, and baseball. Perhaps the most disturbing incident in basketball took place in 1977, when Kermit Washington of the Los Angeles Lakers punched Rudy Tomjanovich of the Houston Rockets in a fight dur- ing a game. 2 Tomjanovich, who had been acting as a peacemaker in another scuffle, s suffered a concussion, nose, jaw, and skull frac- tures, facial lacerations, loss of blood, and leakage of spinal fluid from the brain cavity.' Football evidences the most abundant and serious examples of sports violence. Every player in the National Football League suf- fers at least one injury,5 causing some to 'estimate that a profes- sional player trades twenty years of his life for playing in the * This Essay was most inspired by R.