Violence & Brawls ·
A Binghamton Beating, a Departure and a Sentence in Serbia
After Bryan Steinhauer was left comatose in a May 2008 bar fight, Miladin Kovacevic left the United States while facing assault charges. A Belgrade court later sentenced him for the beating.
On May 4, 2008, a fight in a Binghamton college bar left Bryan Steinhauer in a coma. He was 22 and two weeks from graduating from Binghamton University. Miladin Kovacevic, a 21-year-old basketball player at the university, was charged with assault. While Steinhauer remained hospitalized, Kovacevic left the United States for Serbia after being released on bail.
The fight began when Steinhauer tried to dance with the girlfriend of one of Kovacevic’s friends. Witnesses said Kovacevic repeatedly kicked Steinhauer in the head as he lay on the ground. Police said Kovacevic and two other men were charged with assault and gang assault and held on $100,000 bail. Steinhauer suffered skull fractures and a severe brain injury.
Kovacevic had surrendered his passport. After making bail, he obtained replacement Serbian travel documents and left the country in June. His parents said he had been threatened and treated with disdain because of his nationality, and that they felt they had to rescue him. “My son is not running away from justice, he’s running away from injustice,” his mother, Branka Kovacevic, told CNN. Ivan Rochman, an attorney for the Steinhauer family, rejected that argument: “That’s not the way it works.”
More than two months after the assault, Steinhauer remained in critical condition. His parents said he could not eat or drink on his own. His father, Richard, described signs of awareness that brought no easy comfort. “He has enough awareness to realize what situation he is in, especially when he sees us,” he told CNN. “He starts yelling out and crying out with a tortured look on his face. He’s starting to realize what has happened to him.”
The family wanted Kovacevic returned to the United States to stand trial. His departure had made the case a diplomatic dispute: American officials sought his return, while Serbian officials said their country’s law barred extradition. Serbia said it would be “absolutely cooperative” and suggested that American authorities send the case file so officials could consider prosecuting him there.
The Serbian government later paid $900,000 to Steinhauer’s family under an agreement that also called for putting Kovacevic on trial in Belgrade. In November 2010, a Belgrade court sentenced him to two years and three months in prison for severely beating Steinhauer in the May 2008 fight.
Kovacevic began serving the sentence in January 2011 at a prison in Sombor, Serbia. With three months already spent in detention in the United States and Serbia, he had two years left to serve. Steinhauer’s family and the Obama administration both described the sentence as too lenient.