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Bills' Moulds sentenced to 30 days
Posted: Wednesday May 12, 1999 06:16 PM
LUCEDALE, Miss. (AP) -- Buffalo Bills receiver Eric Moulds must serve a 30-day jail term for contempt of court for delaying child support payments, George County Chancery Court records show. Moulds, a former Mississippi State standout and the Bills top draft choice in 1996, was accused of failing to make the payments to support his 8-year-old son for a three-year period. Chancery Judge Pat Watts Jr. imposed a 90-day sentence during Tuesday's hearing, but suspended 60 days. "We were not asking that he be put in jail, but pay punitive damages," said Robert Shepard, the attorney for Bridget Bradley, the child's mother. "But the judge said that was an option he could not do." Moulds was booked into the George County Jail Tuesday and released on $2,500 bond later that afternoon. He is appealing the sentence. Court officials said Moulds gave his address as West Seneca, N.Y., a suburb of Buffalo. However, there was no telephone listing for the athlete in that city. Shepard said that while Moulds was attending Mississippi State he was ordered to pay $50 a week in child support to his son, provide his income tax returns to Bradley and provide medical and dental insurance to the boy as soon as he was financially able to do so. "Mrs. Bradley wanted the income tax returns so the amount of child support could be adjusted, since Mr. Moulds was paying the minimum in child support as a student," Shepard said. But from 1996-1998, years in which Moulds was getting more than $1 million a year from the Bills, he only paid $350 in child support and failed to provide medical insurance or tax returns, Shepard said. Moulds paid all of the back child support and complied with the other arrangements on Jan. 7, a few days before he was to go to court over the matter. Shepard said he decided to seek punitive damages, to show Moulds "you can't wait until the last minute to pay these sorts of things. For three years, my client and her son didn't have money that was owed them, when he more than had the ability to pay it." The case was Mould's second run-in with legal problems since turning pro. In 1997, Moulds pleaded guilty in Buffalo to harassment after he was charged with attacking his former girlfriend and a Buffalo State College student. In that case, Buffalo City Judge Robert Russell fined Moulds $540 and ordered him to perform 80 hours of community service.
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