Florida State Player Arrested

Florida State defensive end Chris Walker was arrested Friday and charged with drunk driving in Cocoa Beach, Fla., becoming the latest member of the nation’s No. 1 team to run afoul of the law.

Walker was taken to the Brevard County Jail at 2:05 p.m. EST. Sheriff’s deputies, attracted by his squealing car tires, stopped him, according to a police statement.

Walker was being held on $500 bond. He is due in court Jan. 18 for a hearing.

Three other Seminoles have had legal problems this year.

Wide receiver Peter Warrick missed two games while facing charges of felony grand theft, eventually reduced to a misdemeanor. Warrick and teammate Laveranues Coles, also a wide receiver, were arrested for paying only $21.40 for more than $400 worth of designer clothes.

In another incident, cornerback Tay Cody was suspended by Coach Bobby Bowden after his arrest for possession of marijuana.

Florida State will play No. 2 Virginia Tech for the national championship in the Sugar Bowl Jan. 4.

Pro Football

Rae Carruth, faced with a death-penalty trial, will probably run up legal bills in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and perhaps nearly $1 million, a lawyer says.

“A six-figure fee would not be surprising 1/8by 3/8 any stretch of the imagination,” said Joe Cheshire, a Raleigh, N.C., lawyer and chairman of the North Carolina Bar Assn.’s criminal justice section. “There is no question there’s greater cost to a high-profile case.”

But Carruth’s mother said her son doesn’t have much money to defend himself against first-degree murder charges in the killing of Cherica Adams, The Charlotte Observer reported Friday.

“It’s very expensive,” Theodry Carruth said. “I’m not prepared for it.”

It is hard to say exactly how much the former Carolina Panther receiver’s defense will cost because most North Carolina death-penalty cases involve indigent defendants. The court appoints two attorneys for such defendants.

Carruth, who is being held without bond in Mecklenburg Jail Central, has fired Charlotte defense attorneys George Laughrun and Harold Bender, replacing them with David Rudolf of Chapel Hill and Ken Spaulding of Durham.

According to a 1993 Duke University study, trial costs were about $200,000 more for death-penalty cases than non-capital murder trials.

Figure Skating

World champion Maria Butyrskaya took the women’s short-program lead in the Russian Figure Skating Championships at Moscow, only hours after an incident in which her car was blown up.

The Sport Ekspress newspaper said witnesses saw two young people running away from the car shortly before it blew up Thursday night. The explosion was only minutes before Butyrskaya planned to drive to the skating championships. There were no reports of injuries or any details of a police investigation. Butyrskaya declined comment when asked about the report.

In the short program, Butyrskaya was awarded all 5.9s except one 5.8. Victoria Volchkova was second and two-time European champion Irina Slutskaya third.

In the men’s long program, world silver medalist Yevgeny Plushchenko landed a quadruple and seven triple jumps to win his second consecutive Russian title. He beat world champion Alexei Yagudin, who failed on a quad toe loop. Plushchenko performed a quadruple-triple-double, the only skater in the world to do such a combination. He received all 5.9s for presentation and had six technical 5.9s.

In the pairs, world champions Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, third after the short program, capitalized on their opponents’ mistakes to win their second consecutive national title. They got all 5.9 presentation marks for their routine.

Miscellany

Jack Nicklaus’ Golden Bear Golf Inc. has announced a proposed settlement of a class-action lawsuit that could result in the golfing great buying out his shareholders and taking the company private.

If the settlement is approved, the company would pay 75 cents for each of the 2.7 million shares held publicly. Shareholders who lost money would be given an additional $3.5 million total.

The lawsuit claimed Florida-based Golden Bear failed to live up to its bond agreement and withheld financial documents.

The proposed settlement would benefit all shareholders who had lost money on Golden Bear shares between its public offering in 1996 and the announcement of restated earnings on July 27, 1998.

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, according to the Associated Press, told his country’s Olympic athletes that he would reward them if they perform well at the Sydney Games, but warned them not to complain.

Lukashenko, who heads the country’s Olympic committee, exhorted the athletes at a meeting.

“Just produce the result and you’ll have an apartment and dozens of thousands of dollars and you’ll provide for yourself for the rest of your life,” he said. “I’ll buy you anything you need, be it guns, boats, swimming trunks, even undershorts.

“But God forbid if I hear any complaint or question on the eve of your departure for Sydney.”