Former Oregon assistant David Reaves pleaded no contest to charges of DUII, careless driving and refusal of a breath test, ending a saga that cost the embattled his assistant his job in January.
Hired at Oregon to follow Willie Taggart from South Florida to Eugene, Reaves was arrested in late January for driving with a .14 blood alcohol content, nearly twice the legal limit. He was quickly placed on administrative leave, then resigned. He was paid $60,000 and change on a 2-year contract that was set to pay him a total of $600,000.
The arrest happened so early in Reaves’s brief Oregon tenure that he had not yet moved to Eugene, meaning he had to fly in from his Tampa home to make his initial court appearance. Reaves was not present on Monday and offered no comment. “Mr. Reaves was accused of these allegations and it cost him significantly,” attorney Hugh Duvall said, via The Oregonian. “He is back at his home in Tampa and still in the process of putting the pieces back together after this.”
As terms of Reaves’s plea, he was sentenced to a court-ordered diversion program, to abstain from alcohol and drugs for one year, to blow into an ignition interlock device before starting his car, to attend a Victim Impact Panel equivalent in Florida, and to pay a $965 fine. The case against Reaves will be dismissed following his completion of the diversion program.
The additional charges were dropped in exchange for Reaves’s no-contest plea.
