suspended without pay for the remaining four games of the 2008 regular season for conduct detrimental to the team. In addition, the Giants placed Burress on their reserve/non-football injury list, meaning he was ineligible to return for the playoffs. Burress was also scheduled to receive $1 million from his signing bonus on December 10, 2008, initially withheld by the team. The NFL Players Association filed a grievance, saying the team violated the collective bargaining agreement and challenging the suspension and fine received by Burress. A Special Master in arbitration subsequently ruled that the Giants must deliver the entire $1 million to Burress, as per the collective bargaining agreement. "To think that a player could carry a loaded gun into a nightclub, shoot himself and miss the rest of the season but get to keep his entire signing bonus illustrates one of the serious flaws in the current system," said Giants co-owner John Mara in a statement afterward. On December 23, 2008, a search of Burress's New Jersey home by the Totowa, New Jersey police, the New York Police Department, and investigators from the Manhattan District Attorney turned up a 9 mm handgun, a rifle, ammunition, and the clothing believed to have been worn by Burress on the night of his shooting. On June 12, 2009, Burress's attorney Benjamin Brafman announced that he had been unable to reach a sentencing agreement. Burress asked a Manhattan grand jury for sympathy during two hours of testimony on July 29, 2009. On Monday, August 3, 2009, prosecutors announced that Burress had been indicted by the grand jury on two felony counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, and a single count of reckless endangerment in the second degree, a misdemeanor. On August 20, 2009, Burress accepted a plea deal that would put him in prison for two years with an additional two years of supervised release. His sentencing was held on September 22, 2009. Burress hired a prison consultant to advise him on what to expect while in prison. In January 2010, Burress applied for and was denied a work release from prison. On June 6, 2011, Burress was released from a protective custody unit of the Oneida Correctional Facility in Rome, New York, having served 20 months. Civil lawsuits Burress had a civil lawsuit, filed on December 8, 2008, in Broward County, Florida, in which Alise Smith claimed that