The News Tribune
Quinton Dunbar appears free to play for the Seahawks this season.
The cornerback’s bizarre felony armed-robbery case in Florida ended Friday when Broward County prosecutors announced they had decided to drop all criminal charges against Dunbar stemming from a house party there in May.
Co-defendant DeAndre Baker, a cornerback for the New York Giants from Dunbar’s hometown of Miami, was formally charged with four counts of robbery with a firearm. He is accused of stealing cash and watched from four men at a party in Miramar, Fla.
Baker will go to trial.
Dunbar will not.
“Broward prosecutors declined to file criminal charges against the other NFL player who was arrested in relation to this incident, Quinton Dunbar, 28, due to insufficient evidence,” Michael J. Satz, state attorney for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit of Florida, wrote in a statement released by the Broward State Attorney’s Office Friday.
Dunbar has been on the NFL’s commissioner’s exempt list since July 27. That prohibits him from practicing with the Seahawks or attending games. He has been allowed at the team’s facility in Renton for meetings, individual testing for the COVID-19 virus and all other team functions during the strength and conditioning portion of training camp. That continued Friday.
Dunbar’s attorney, Andrew Rier, told The News Tribune Friday Dunbar was still in Miami. He was awaiting the NFL taking him off the exempt list. Rier said he and Dunbar expect that to happen “soon.”
“I’m extremely happy,” Rier told the TNT. “I think the Broward County prosecutors did the right thing in dropping the charges against Mr. Dunbar. I can’t wait to root for him on the football field this fall.”
Asked if he had any indication the league would now remove Dunbar from the commissioner’s exempt list, Rier said: “They should. He did nothing wrong. He is innocent.”
When will Dunbar join the Seahawks for training camp?
“Hopefully soon, yes,” Rier said. “That should be soon.”
The Seahawks are scheduled to begin non-padded practices Wednesday at their team headquarters in Renton. Dunbar is currently exempt from the 80-man preseason roster.
The NFL could still discipline Dunbar as part of its own investigation under the league’s personal-conduct policy. It doesn’t need a criminal verdict or even a charge against a player to do that. But the NFL would have to uncover a load of information against Dunbar that Florida’s law-enforcement and judicial systems have not.
Suddenly, the Seahawks’ secondary and defense looks stronger than it did Thursday.
Dunbar is coming off a career year with Washington, before his trade to Seattle this offseason. The Seahawks traded for him expecting him to replace Tre Flowers, who struggled at cornerback in 2019, his second year converting from college safety. Provided the NFL takes him off its exempt list as the Seahawks now would expect, Dunbar should become the starter opposite Pro Bowl cornerback Shaquill Griffin.
The safeties are Quandre Diggs, a Pro Bowl alternate last season after his trade from Detroit in October, and All-Pro Jamal Adams. Seattle traded two first-round pick and veteran starter Bradley McDougald to the New York Jets to acquire Adams, 24, last month.
The 6-foot-3 Flowers could become an option as a bigger, rangier nickel defense back inside against taller receivers in a three-cornerback arrangement, depending on matchups this season.
Dunbar and Griffin are entering the final seasons of their contracts.
Dunbar entered pleas of not guilty to all four charges of armed robbery in Broward County May 17. He was released on $100,000 bond with the stipulation he stay in Florida while awaiting trial. The court hearing his and Baker’s case recently granted Dunbar permission to leave his native state to participate in the early parts of Seahawks training camp.
A few days after his release from jail in May Dunbar rejoined the Seahawks’ virtual offseason training sessions online from Florida. He was on those calls through them ending in late June.
“He’s been very open with the discussions of what’s taken place, and the whole process going on,” coach Pete Carroll said of Dunbar June 11. “”I don’t have the details of where that is right now. We can’t comment on that, anyway.”
“We have been very much connected with him and what is next and all of that.”
Just about everything surrounding this case, including Friday’s news, have been a surprise.
In mid-May, days after the four people were allegedly robbed of cash and jewelry at a house party at Miramar during the coronavirus pandemic, Miami attorney Michael Grieco told The News Tribune and then a judge in Dunbar’s bond hearing that Dunbar was at the party in question. But Grieco said Dunbar has been a victim of young people at the party who initially made up stories to police about the involvement of a wealthy, young NFL player in the robbery of expensive watches and cash—and that Dunbar has been a victim of “amateur-hour” work by the police department that created the arrest warrant for four alleged felonies against the Seahawks player.
Grieco produced affidavits he said he gave prosecutors and police in Florida affidavits from five victims and witnesses that recanted what they told detectives about the Dunbar’s involvement in an armed robbery.
“The victims—the alleged victims—have completely recanted, on paper, sworn, their stories,” Grieco said in May.
After Dunbar posted $100,000 bond and was released from jail, prosecutors spent months deciding whether to proceed with a trial against Dunbar and Baker.
During that time, early last month, the New York Daily News cited warrants obtained from public-records requests that said a witness oversaw four victims allegedly get paid in Grieco’s Miami office to recant the statements they had made to police that Dunbar was involved in the armed robbery of them.
That news broke a day after Dunbar hired a second attorney to defend him, Fort Lauderdale-based Michael D. Weinstein.
Within days of the Daily News’ report, Dunbar changed lawyers. The Florida bar reportedly was investigating Grieco. About the only truths of the case were that Dunbar was indeed at the party in question in May, and that his first name was Quinton.
Everything else was being disputed. A trial to determine the truth seemed imminent and assured.
Then came Friday’s decision by state prosecutors to drop all criminal charges against Dunbar.
“I think they came to the right conclusion,” Rier said.
“Mr. Dunbar did nothing wrong.”
