Eric Kay, who was convicted of giving pitcher Tyler Skaggs the drugs that caused his death in 2019, argues prosecutors misstated evidence.
, claiming the team allowed Kay “unrestricted access” to players despite knowledge of his drug abuse. Rusty Hardin, an attorney for Skaggs’s family, said Monday in response to Kay’s appeal: “The jury got it, Eric Kay and the Angels continue not to.”The Angels declined to comment on Kay’s appeal. The team has denied the allegations in the lawsuit filed by Skaggs’s family.
In the appeal brief, Kay’s attorneys argued the government relied on thin, circumstantial evidence to show he bought the deadly pill in California and then gave it to Skaggs after the team arrived in Dallas on a road trip on July 1, 2019. Kay’s attorneys argued cell phone data used by the government as evidence he met with a suspected drug dealer in fact only showed they were within a few miles of each other. Skaggs texted Kay his room number the night of his death, which prosecutors seized on as evidence Kay brought him the pill.
But Kay’s attorneys argued the version of events he shared with a coworker was just as likely: that Kay “arrived emptyhanded and Skaggs offereda crushed-up line,” which Kay then declined to snort. Kay did not testify in his own defense at trial.A prosecutor also told the jury Skaggs’s only source for drugs was Kay and there was no evidence messages were deleted from Skaggs’s phone after he died, despite testimony contradicting both claims, Kay’s lawyers argued.
Following the verdict, one of Kay’s trial attorneys was disbarred in a separate matter. Kay has claimed that when prosecutors initially offered him a plea deal that could have gotten him released in five years, his other trial attorney “belittled him for considering it and threatened to withdraw from the case” if he accepted, according to the appeal brief. Kay, 48, is serving his sentence at FCI Englewood, a federal prison in Colorado, with a release date in 2041.
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