Bears running back Cedric Benson, who says he was mistreated by officers who pepper sprayed him during a weekend boating excursion, has hired a new lawyer as he prepares to fight charges of boating while intoxicated and resisting arrest, the Austin American-Statesman is reporting.

“I do not believe from what I’ve been told that Cedric was intoxicated,” lawyer Sam Bassett said.  “I do not believe he was aggressive toward an officer to warrant being pepper sprayed.”

Meanwhile, the paper reports that former Texas linebacker Aaron Harris also was on Benson’s boat, and that Harris said he took pictures of Benson while he was undergoing a field sobriety test and being arrested, pictures that he plans to give to Benson’s lawyer.

Harris is the fiancé of Elizabeth Cartwright, another passenger on the boat, who told the Chicago Tribune that Benson wasn’t drunk and was mistreated by police.

On the night in question, Cartwright says she called her father and told him “to call 911 and tell them my black friend is getting beat up by cops,” possibly suggesting that Cartwright believed the police targeted Benson because he is black.  The Lower Colorado River Authority, which made the arrest, says that in the last five years, its officers have made 457 arrests on the lake, and that 428 of the people arrested were white and 10 were black.

The American-Statesman reports that Bassett will represent Benson in a preliminary hearing on May 19 in front of a Travis County administrative judge.