Plaxico Burress indictment raises political questions

Burress was indicted for shooting himself in the thigh at a Manhattan nightclub last year. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau announced the indictment at a news conference on Monday, reported by the Associated Press. If convicted, he faces a minimum prison sentence of 3 1/2 years.

Still, some critics argue that Burress's indictment was laced with political overtones in a city where Mayor Mike Bloomberg seemed to be campaigning for the football star's prosecution. "While Mr. Burress certainly brought trouble upon himself, his case was politically tinged from the get-go," Clyde Haberman writes in the New York Times.

"About the same time that he landed in trouble, the Bernard Madoff case was unfolding," Haberman writes. "High finance is Mr. Bloomberg's specialty. Yet one did not see him carrying on about the need to throw the book at a swindler who had ruined or unsettled thousands of lives."

Sports columnist Steve Winkel agrees. "For someone like Burress, minus the fame--a similar crime committed by a person with no intent to commit a great crime, no intent to harm, injure or threaten someone, and no past similar crimes, I can almost guarantee would conclude swiftly with a plea deal to a lesser charge," he writes.