Harford County, Md. (7News) — University of Maryland football player Dontay Joyner pleaded guilty Wednesday to a telephone misuse charge after being accused of threatening to kill his girlfriend.
Joyner was initially charged with two misdemeanors, telephone misuse and electronic communication harassment. The harassment charge, however, was dropped.
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“Dontay Joyner pled guilty to the misuse of a telephone charge, as well as the telephone calls, despite him understanding that he never understood the commissioner to tell him he was not allowed to call his girlfriend from jail,” Douglas Gansler, an attorney representing Joyner told 7News.
According to court documents obtained by 7News, Joyner’s then-girlfriend wanted to break up with him after being together for about a year and a half.
Court documents revealed Joyner threatened to kill her and traveled from Laurel to confront her in Harford County.
Officials were called to the scene and while they were with Joyner, they witnessed him calling his girlfriend 19 times.
His girlfriend “advised Mr. Joyner several times that she wanted to cease communication and Mr. Joyner refused to accepted this answer,” the documents state.
Gansler told 7News that Joyner had to plead guilty “because he had no choice.”
“They would have just kept him in jail forever. Not that he didn’t do it. In other words, he did technically misuse, misuse a telephone by. By calling his girlfriend repeatedly to try and continue the conversation that they were having, and by texting her as well, so he did technically violate the misuse of a telephone statute, and not really in the way that the legislature designed it, but he could satisfy that he had to do that to be able to get out of jail,” Gansler said.
Gansler said Joyner has been held in jail for 27 days: “The whole thing is outrageous.”
Gansler mentioned that Joyner was ordered no-contact with his girlfriend. However, Joyner did speak with her while in custody after having his mother make the call.
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“There is absolutely nothing normal about this case, and in fact, not having a hearing for a bond hearing was also atypical and just not right,” Gansler said. “And there’s this is a man who was arrested for misuse of the telephone, had not been convicted of anything, had no past record of any kind.”
“He’s a football player, so no contact means you can’t hit somebody, you know, and most people think if you’re told not to have contact with another person, you don’t, you don’t go see them, you don’t seek them out, because that could be cause, you know, an altercation, it in legal terms,” Gansler told 7News.
Gansler said he filed a motion regarding bond and the judge immediately denied the request without holding a hearing.
“Someone says there’s no contact, it means you also are not supposed to call the person or text them or anything of that nature, but no one told him that. No one said you can’t, you cannot call her or text her, they just said you cannot have contact with your girlfriend, so to mean I can’t have contact with his girlfriend,” Gansler added.
Gansler said prosecutors were asking for six months of jailtime for Joyner for the telephone misuse.
Gansler described the judicial process regarding Joyner’s case of something similar to to the pre-civil rights act: “…this is the kind of thing you expect to see, in the Deep South, priors the Civil Rights Act, and it’s happening right here in Maryland right now.”
An official from the UMD athletics department said in a statement, “We are aware of the situation and have no further comment at this time.”
Joyner is a defensive back who graduated from a high school in Florida. He transferred to UMD in 2025 from Arkansas State, where he played from 2023 until 2025.
He managed 40 tackles during his first year at UMD and two interceptions, according to ESPN data.
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