Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson on Tuesday pleaded no contest to a Class A misdemeanor charge of reckless assault for causing injury to his 4-year-old son.
Peterson will serve two years of probation on a deferred sentence that would wipe the criminal conviction from his record if successfully completed.
Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon declined to go into details of the plea negotiations with Peterson’s defense attorneys, but said the punishment ultimately fulfilled everyone’s expectation for an outcome.
Ligon said he was pleased on behalf of the child’s mother, a single parent living in Minnesota who did not want the publicity of possibly having to testify in the case.
Peterson had originally been charged with injury to a child, a state jail felony, but pleaded down to the lesser misdemeanor charge to avoid jail time or a conviction on his criminal record.
“Any time you indict somebody, you believe you’ve got the goods to take it to a trial,” Ligon said. “The vast majority of cases work out through some kind of negotiated plea. When you have a child who is this young, and you have this type of undue attention focused on a single mom and a kid, my concerns about trial typically dealt with what their feelings were and what were their abilities to kind of process what was going on.”
As terms of his probation, Peterson will have to complete parenting classes, 80 hours of community service, which will include public service announcements.
Peterson spoke briefly to the media following Tuesday’s court setting, but neither he nor defense attorney Rusty Hardin answered questions.
“I truly regret this incident,” Peterson said. “I stand here and take full responsibility for my actions. I love my son, more than any one of you could even imagine. I’m looking forward to, and I’m anxious, to continue my relationship with my child. I’m just glad this is over. I can put this behind me and my family can begin to move forward.”
Hardin credited the DA’s Office for being professional and “having the courage to do what was right.”
Both attorneys indicated the deferred adjudication sentence is geared toward making Peterson a better father, focusing on his own behavior modification.
“I think this is a very fair and just resolution to this thing,” Hardin said. “Thisis a very complicated issue, socially. But it was very simple from our standpoint. Adrian has always said he very much regretted what happened, as far as the injury. He has always accepted responsibility for it. Today was another step forward in that situation.”
Ligon said one of the issues the grand jury considered heavily with in determining whether to indict Peterson was their own experience and views on corporal punishment.
“The collateral consequences to Peterson I know weighed heavily on their mind, as well as the fact that everybody there had been disciplined as a child” Ligon said. “And so their binding this case over I think was a reflection that they felt this went beyond what was reasonable in regards to being a parent. …
“I believe this is the value of the case we had initially. The probation is all about making (Peterson) a better parent. When this is over with, I still have a parent who is going to be a father to a kid.”
Peterson is still on the NFL commissioner’s exemption list, which essentially amounts to a paid leave of absence.
