Jailed Norwood facing legal woes

Dean Juipe

Thursday, June 8, 2000 | 9:56 a.m.

The legal troubles of World Boxing Association featherweight champion Freddie Norwood have been multiplying on what seems to be a daily basis.

Norwood, a Las Vegas resident for several years, is incarcerated in the Clark County Detention Center on an assortment of charges. He also has charges pending against him in California.

Norwood, 30, a native of St. Louis who has a professional boxing record of 37-0-1, has been having legal difficulties since defending his championship two weeks ago against Pablo Chacon in Argentina.

Upon his return to the United States, Customs officials arrested him in Tarrant County (Texas) on kidnapping charges in Nevada and assault charges in California. Norwood was transported to Las Vegas last Saturday and not only has been jailed since that time but has seen two additional and unrelated charges filed against him.

"I have a few balls in the air right now that I'm trying to juggle," his local attorney, Marc Risman, said Wednesday of attempting to extricate Norwood from the mess he finds himself in.

On the kidnapping charge, Risman believes Norwood will be exonerated and is working on a deal with the prosecuting attorney.

"We'll be in court (today) and I'm hoping to effectuate a deal we have with the State," Risman said. "This was a situation where Freddie had a long-standing relationship with a family and stayed out late one night with a girl. The charge is that he held her against her will, but the girl admitted Freddie didn't touch her and they stopped at a 7-Eleven and he went in and he left the keys in the car.

"It seems more like a misunderstanding than anything else."

Compounding matters, however, is the fact Norwood was brought into court Wednesday -- unbeknownst to Risman -- and heard a dated domestic battery charge read against him.

"The trouble there is that Freddie never completed the counseling program he was supposed to," Risman said. "The charges were to have been dropped after he completed the counseling, but he never did."

Norwood received a 21-day jail sentence on that charge and was told, once again, that he would have to complete counseling to have the charges removed from his record.

Further adding to Risman's workload was a Wednesday afternoon discovery that a car-rental agency had filed criminal charges against Norwood for renting a car and failing to return it. Risman did not yet know the name of the car agency or its location.

"I just found out about that one," he remarked.

Still dangling above Norwood's head are assault charges in California related to a freeway incident there in which his mother was jailed for hitting a man with a Club anti-theft device. Norwood's assault charges from the incident are sill pending.