Jury turns in not guilty verdict for Mayweather

Monday, Aug. 1, 2005 | 9:29 a.m.

WBC super lightweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. received a unanimous decision in the legal ring on Friday as a jury found him not guilty of beating the mother of his three children outside a nightclub in 2003.

It took the jury roughly 90 minutes to determine Mayweather was innocent of battery constituting domestic violence against Josie Harris outside the SRO Club on Dec. 27, 2003.

Although the champion boxer is never nervous in the ring, he admitted standing trial was a different story.

"I give all my thanks to God," Mayweather said. "My life is on the line so of course I was nervous, I got a family to feed."

Mayweather said the case was just "another obstacle in my life" and that he was a "good guy."

He said the "power is in the hands of the media. They can make you a good guy and they can make you out to be a bad guy."

The case ultimately came down to the question of when Harris lied. She called 911 and said "my babies' father just beat me up." In a statement to police, she said she had met Mayweather to receive money, but instead he pulled her hair, hit her, pulled her out of the car and kicked her before driving away.

During her testimony on Thursday, however, Harris said she had lied to police and the truth was that she was "basically trying to fight him, pulling on him, punching on him, telling him he was wrong for what he did to me."

She said she was drunk and on a half pill of Ecstacy at the time of the incident.

Harris, who receives $2,400 a month in support payments from Mayweather, said she was upset that Mayweather had broken up with her and had started seeing another woman.

Mayweather has faced charges of battery before.

In February he pleaded no contest in his hometown of Grand Rapids, Mich., to a charge of misdemeanor assault and battery for a bar fight.

In June 2004 Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Deborah Lippis found Maywether guilty of two counts of battery for punching Herneatha McGill and Karra Blackburn at the Ra nightclub in the Luxor on Aug. 1, 2003.

He was fined and given community service in both cases.