Witnesses changed their stories. Evidence is missing. Now Shilo Sanders awaits verdict

DENVER – The five-day bankruptcy court trial of Deion Sanders’ son Shilo ended here Friday, Sept. 4, with $12 million still at stake for each side, no verdict (yet) and one side accusing Shilo Sanders of never accepting responsibility for what he allegedly did in 2015.

Both sides also accused the other of making “no sense” in their closing arguments, leaving Judge Michael E. Romero to decide which is right.

Is it Sanders, the former Colorado football player who wants to break free from the $12 million judgment he owes John Darjean, a former security guard at his school in Dallas?

Or is it Darjean, who wants to collect every penny of that judgment after he said Sanders assaulted him and left him permanently injured in 2015?

“These cases are tough,” Judge Romero told the attorneys after their closing arguments Friday. “They’re very, very tough and very difficult, highly emotional.”

For Darjean, the case was also physically taxing. He collapsed in court after completing his testimony in the case Thursday and was taken to the hospital by ambulance. He was released later that day but did not return to court Friday because his attorney said he was “in bed.”

In his absence, each side made its final oral arguments about whether Sanders should remain on the hook for the $12 million he owes Darjean. The verdict might not come until after mid-November, when final written arguments are due, according to the judge.

This was Day 5 of the trial and how it went down:

Shilo Sanders‘ football journey has unfolded alongside his father, Deion Sanders, beginning on youth and showcase stages before moving into the college spotlight.

See the early moments that helped shape Sanders’ path in football as his career started to take form.

Above, Team Ballaholics head coach Deion Sanders poses with his son defensive back Shilo Sanders at Camping World Stadium.

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Shilo Sanders‘ football journey has unfolded alongside his father, Deion Sanders, beginning on youth and showcase stages before moving into the college spotlight.

See the early moments that helped shape Sanders’ path in football as his career started to take form.

Above, Team Ballaholics head coach Deion Sanders poses with his son defensive back Shilo Sanders at Camping World Stadium.

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Darjean, 50, has the burden of proof in this case and is trying to show Sanders’ debt to him stems from a “willful and malicious injury.” That term is a specific exception in bankruptcy law that would prevent a debtor such as Sanders from being allowed to discharge a debt.

Darjean sued Sanders over the incident and won a $11.89 default judgment against Sanders in 2022 after Sanders didn’t show up for the trial in Dallas.

“Responsibility is a word you’re never going to hear from the defense (Sanders), because he never accepts it,” Darjean’s attorney, Ori Raphael, said in his closing argument. “And frankly that would have been the best argument (for him) to say, (that) it was an accident. He never says it.”

Sanders, 26, in fact says he “did nothing” to Darjean except try to escape him when Darjean tried to confiscate is phone at school in Dallas on Sept. 17, 2015, when Sanders was 15. Sanders testified he was the victim, not the other way around. He said Darjean attacked him, choked him, caused him to black out, caused him to hit his head and started tearing the skin off his arm when Darjean grabbed his arm.

This contradicted several other witnesses at the same trial who said Shilo swung an elbow at Darjean, punched him or both. It also conflicts with contemporaneous police and medical reports from that day, along with a final judgment in Texas state court that found Sanders liable for assaulting him.

Raphael noted Friday multiple witnesses said the “same thing” and said they saw Shilo Sanders deliver an elbow strike, punches and a push against Darjean. Raphael noted Darjean was taken to the hospital that day by ambulance, while “Shilo kept his phone.” Sanders said he couldn’t recall if he sought treatment from a doctor that day or if he filed a police report against Darjean.

“We have proven by the preponderance of evidence, more likely than not, that Shilo Sanders willfully and maliciously struck Mr. Darjean and caused an injury,” Raphael said.

Sanders’ attorney, Victor Vital, didn’t counter the testimony of Darjean’s witnesses in his closing argument. He instead offered two demonstrations for the judge.

One was a theory based on the limited video evidence in the case that the incident in question only lasted a few seconds, which he suggested is not enough time to support Darjean’s version of events. Darjean said Sanders swung a roundhouse elbow into his upper chest and punched him twice in the face before he restrained him on the ground.

“Careful scrutiny of the video evidence would be very helpful,” Vital told the judge.

The trial featured limited video footage of the incident from two angles, both of which were published by TMZ in 2016. Neither angle is conclusive about what happened.

But some witnesses testified they viewed a another angle that is more conclusive and which showed Sanders striking Darjean. Darjean has accused Deion Sanders of arranging to have this footage deleted. It has been missing for years.

Without that missing footage, the challenge at trial was trying to determine what happened in the short time between the two existing video sequences. That’s when the action occurred, but there’s no video of it.

Darjean estimated the missing sequence might have lasted six to eight seconds. Vital argued that timestamps from the existing videos narrow that window down to half of that or less.

Vital also tried to demonstrate with another attorney for Sanders that an left elbow strike from Sanders wouldn’t have been able to connect with Darjean’s upper chest if Darjean was gripping Sanders’ other arm as he described.

Raphael, Darjean’s attorney, poked fun of Sanders’ video timestamp theory, comparing it to the “magic bullet theory” in the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald.

“I didn’t see where Lee Harvey Oswald was in that (demonstration),” Raphael said.

He noted that Sanders’ legal team didn’t bring in a forensic video expert to validate this timestamp theory, which wasn’t put forth by Sanders’ legal team until the very end of the five-day trial.

Sanders attended every day of the trial and only called two other witnesses in his defense. Both worked at the school in 2015, and both changed their stories. One was an administrator, Ruda Nash James, who testified she witnessed Darjean choking Sanders that day. Raphael then confronted her with a recorded phone call from that day when she told Sanders’ mother Pilar, “I didn’t see the neck part. I didn’t see all that.”

The other defense witness was a gym teacher, Heiser Shields, who gave a statement that day in 2015 that he saw Sanders throw an elbow at Darjean. Eleven years later, he said he changed his mind based on the limited video evidence he saw recently. He also testified he didn’t witness Sanders being disruptive that day as other witnesses said he was.

Both witnesses confirmed their travel and lodging for the trial was being paid by Sanders’ legal team and said it wouldn’t affect their testimony.

Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com

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