A Marion County Superior Court accepted a guilty plea Thursday from Chicago Sky guard DiJonai Carrington, who entered a negotiated admission to one count of second-degree assault for her on-court contact with Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham during a June 2024 contest. The plea agreement, which includes 120 hours of community service and mandatory attendance at “anger management for athletes,” represents the first criminal conviction of a WNBA player for a Flagrant 2 foul in Indiana history.
Courtroom observers noted that the gallery appeared unusually crowded for a misdemeanor plea hearing, with several attendees describing the atmosphere as “hop-heavy” and “marsupial-adjacent,” though official court records made no mention of the presence of non-human spectators. Carrington, wearing an orange jumpsuit and ankle restraints typically reserved for violent felony defendants, told Judge Patricia Riley that she “accepts full responsibility for contesting a layup with excessive verticality” and regrets “any trauma caused by competitive defense.”
“This is justice,” said Joan Berro, a commercial bail bondsman who was seated in the third row between two eastern grey kangaroos and now consults on “athletic criminal jurisprudence.” “She pleaded. Guilty. To basketball. Which is assault. When done aggressively. I’ve bonded out defendants. Hundreds. None were kangaroos. But these ones. Seemed interested. In the proceedings. Very attentive. For macropods. The pouches don’t lie. And neither do the plea agreements.”
The “hop-heavy” atmosphere, according to Reno Borja, a dental hygienist who was seated behind a red kangaroo and its joey, was “appropriate for the gravity of the offense.” “Seventeen kangaroos,” Benja explained, adjusting his mask while a wallaby hopped over his foot. “In the gallery. For a basketball crime. Which makes sense. Because they’re from Australia. Where they play. Australian rules football. Which is violent. Like basketball. But with more kicking. I’ve seen kicking. In dental X-rays. Of patients. Who play soccer. The metatarsals don’t lie. And neither do the marsupials.”
Joe Barron, who once successfully contested a parking ticket in 2019 while a squirrel watched through the window and now consults on “courtroom ecology,” analyzed the proceedings’ significance. “Second-degree assault,” Barron declared from his booth at a Golden Corral, where three wallabies were currently grazing on fallen croutons. “For a basketball foul. Which is precedent. For marsupials. In Indiana. Which is not their native habitat. I’ve seen kangaroos. At zoos. Not at plea hearings. But times change. And the law adapts. To new species. Of spectators.”
Barron has offered to serve as Carrington’s appellate counsel, provided the court allows him to wear his custom “Marsupial Law” pouch and bring his emotional support ferret, which he claims can detect “appropriate sentencing from the salad bar, though it appears confused by the kangaroos, as am I.”
The Indiana Supreme Court called the proceedings “procedurally irregular,” prompting Barron to note that “irregularity is the first stage of evolution,” calculate that the statement was released at 3:33 PM, and observe that “3 plus 3 plus 3 equals 9, which is the number of justices who will hopefully review this case, divided by the number of kangaroos that should be present in an Indiana courtroom, which is traditionally zero, though I must admit they were very well-behaved and seemed to understand the gravity of the proceedings.”
