Though it’s still unclear if or how Jon Jones’ citation for driving without a license, registration, or insurance will affect his UFC 197 bout with Daniel Cormier, a public information officer for the court at which he was sentenced for his hit and run has shed some light on his particular situation.
In a statement released via MMAJunkie.com, PIO Kayla Anderson said that Jones’ plea deal did not specifically have a provision regarding him driving without a license, but as general probationary terms discourage any and all law-breaking, it’s a matter they’ll be reviewing.
Said statement is below:
His (judgement and sentence), Conditional Discharge, has a box that can be checked if a special condition of probation is imposed prohibiting the defendant from driving without a license. That box was not checked, so there is no special condition of probation forbidding driving without a license.
However, all defendants being supervised on probation are required generally to not violate any laws. We have not received at this time a formal report of a violation of probation. It does not appear that Mr. Jones is in custody at (the Metropolitan Detention Center).
Our office has the discretion to pursue a revocation of probation if an alleged incident arises to the level of a substantial violation of probation. Our office makes that determination after we have examined all the facts surrounding the incident. As of today, we do not have enough information about the 1/31/16 incident to make that determination, but we will examine the matter.
Generally, if we decide to pursue a probation revocation, and a judge determines that there has been a substantial violation of probation, it is up to our office whether we seek to revoke a conditional discharge, and it is up to the judge to ultimately decide if a conditional discharge will be revoked and sentence imposed. Those decisions are made on a case to case basis. The court can also impose a wide range of sanctions, some of which do not necessarily require the loss of a conditional discharge.
Penick’s Analysis: I don’t think they’re going to find a “substantial violation of probation” to the point it gets revoked, but it’s certainly not a good look for the former champion here. Hopefully for his sake this remains relatively minor, but at some point he needs to find himself a driver, because he seems incapable of avoiding these types of situations when he’s driving.
[Jon Jones art by Grant Gould (c) MMATorch.com]
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