The NFL & their anti-gun partners in the Atlantic County, NJ (feel free to post your displeasure on their FB page) prosecutors office would like to provide this illustrated to how to stay out of too much trouble:
That’s what a two game suspension looks like in the NFL. (Now, I’m sure the NFL would like to point out that if they taking a “beating” in the media and from fans over the incident, they may claim that the “discovery” that the victim is/was pregnant increases the suspension to six whole games, gosh darn it!) This is also the illustrated guide for how the Atlantic County prosecutors view not-so-innocent mistakes worthy of pre-trial diversion programs so that you never have to see the inside of a jail cell once you’ve lawyered up.
However, if you’re a black woman arrested after being pulled over for a vaguely claimed “unsafe lane change,” then you’re going to rot in jail for daring to believe that New Jersey recognizes your Second Amendment right to defend yourself.
We hope this illustrative guide was helpful to help you understand the slaps on the wrist standards for these two anti-gun groups. If you’re a man strong enough to take down a woman in one punch – and decide to do it against your pregnant fianceé – that’s no biggie, as long as you have a lucrative sports contract since you need to be out of jail to protect your image and support your family. However, if you’re a single mother whose children rely on you to provide for them without the comforts of a sports career, then you’re clearly a true danger to all around you and deserve to sit in jail while your kids are left to family and/or the system.
Unfortunately they don’t allow other people to post on their page or message them.
I am going to take some heat for this. The girlfriend/fiancé hit him 3 times in the face. Once in the hallway before getting on the elevator, again in the elevator and a third time. He is a thug and not man enough to take it and he hits her square I the face. Sad.
I am not defending him, I would never hit a woman, but the woman should not feel free to hit him either.
Why is no one mentioning this? Because he is a big strong football player? Abuse is non gender based, just one gender tends to be stronger.
I agree that her hitting him was horribly also wrong. As Jake just noted below, that child is clearly going to be raised in a family where they both turn to violence to solve problems.
However, you’re also looking at a disparity of force situation here. He’s not even really reacting to her hits, and then he throws a solid punch that sends her into a wall and completely unconscious when he proceeds to drag her body around, poke at it with his feet, and not even make any attempt to get any kind of medical attention for her after hitting her that hard. In fact, his body language looks like he’s still ranting at her even as she slightly recovers and a hotel employee steps in to get her assistance.
That kind of reaction shows that he likely felt zero regret about using such an extreme amount of force against her. That kind of reaction makes the blow far less likely to have been done out of self-defense and much more of a “put her in her place” action.
Looking closely at the video, that was his second punch. It looks like after they got in the elevator it went like this:
– she strikes him again
– he hits her and backs away
– she staggers for a moment, then lunges across the elevator at him
– he hits her again, this time knocking her down and into the elevator wall, knocking her out
I think the two parts I put in italics there are key – he tried to back away as best he could, and she charged after him aggressively.
Without audio, I’m not going to draw any conclusions about his attitude there. One could also also reasonably assume that “dragging her around” was an attempt to get her off the elevator to where he could get help. Once he got her (mostly) out of the elevator, it looks like there were people pretty close by that he was talking to. Asking for help? Talking about how he “had to lay his [blank] out] because she got uppity? Only the people that were there know for sure.
As for how hard he hit her, I can say from personal experience that it can be hard to judge how hard you’re hitting someone during an altercation, and even more so when they’re moving towards you like she was.
Agreed with the above …
I wasn’t exactly sure that’s how it’d gone down since the videos were kinda skippy / jerky. Assuming that’s how the events transpired, then Janay Palmer Rice is the one that should be in jail.
So how is a man to know his own strength? Not like you can practice hitting someone and ask.
“and then he throws a solid punch that sends her into a wall”
Based on the video, it appears to me that the solidity of the punch had more to do with her charging into his fist than him using a large amount of force. It looks like he didn’t put anything other than his arm into it, though clearly as an athlete he is a very strong man.
You can see what I mean by watching these knockout game assholes. They throw their entire bodies in to the punches.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=706_1385291046
Not that it makes it better – he must have known she was pregnant.
Why should he have to “take it”? Why does a refusal to allow himself to be repeatedly struck in the face make him a “thug”, just because his attacker is a woman?
Yeah, I bet I’m going to take some heat for this, too. But “being a man” doesn’t mean you have to stand there and let someone beat you just because they don’t have dangly bits between their legs.
Because a man can take it. That’s my opinion.
I doubt that you would “take it” from another man … in fact the fight would have likely started OUTSIDE the elevator following the first hit.
I would never take it from another man. I think I said there is definite gender bias.
I wonder if the fact that she struck him at least twice before his first hit and that she was charging at him before the knockout blow might have played into the prosecutor’s decision?
Trial by Media. And now it’s ruined his career, whether he deserves it or not.
What blows my mind is that they still got married after that. That is not going to be a healthy household for their child to grow up in, no matter who you think the abuser is.
He would have been justified in using reasonable force to defend himself. Striking someone with as much forced as he did could be reasonably construed by a jury as unreasonable, especially given that it was with enough force to knock her unconscious.
Like I noted above, it can be hard to judge how hard you’re hitting someone during an altercation, and even more so when they’re moving towards you like she was.
Also, it looks like it was how she fell that knocked her out – she hit the wall of the elevator and the handrail on the way down. A rapid succession of smaller blows could be just as likely to be what knocked her out as a single hard blow. It’s hard to tell from the video.
This isn’t a movie or a novel – there’s no such thing as “a precisely calculated” knockout blow. Skull hits are unpredicatable as to the result, immediate or long-term.
I will note that the monday-morning quarterbacking of this video is exhibit A in why cops don’t want to wear body cameras. I think they should wear them anyway, but it’s not exactly improbable that an out-of-context video clip “leaked” and carefully trimmed will be used maliciously. And that clip has some jumping that didn’t appear to be related to the cutting-in of the slo-mo. Maybe it’s clipping out irrelevancies, maybe it’s clipping out important events. I don’t know, you don’t know, only the TMZ editors (who are in the business of clickbait) know.
I think I’m on record here (and if I’m not, perhaps I should be) that disparity-of-force is a terrible idea as a legal standard in self-defense proceedings. This is (so far) an isolated incident of someone using force in response to a sudden lunging physical attack.
Also, remember, the woman, who was his fiancee, is now his wife. Regardless of her private attitude (not a mind-reader), she was obviously willing to publicly strengthen her relationship with him. Say the prosecutor proceeded with charges. At some point, he’s either got to get her on the stand and say “he attacked me without justification,” or show that video and hope the defense doesn’t put her on the stand and say “yeah, I took a swing at him first, he didn’t mean to knock me down; don’t send my husband to jail!”
I sat on a jury for a case where self-defense was offered as a defense, and I’ve heard the jury instructions in such a case. I think I’m going to get a blog post out of this, but in case I don’t, or if you want the short-form; I believe that a reasonable jury might include at least one member who would find a self-defense claim to be possible. In NJ, “The State has the burden to prove to [the jurors] beyond a reasonable doubt that the defense of self defense is untrue.” Prosecutors hate losing cases. I can fully believe that the prosecutor in question looked at these issues and declined to roll the dice with a jury trial. Also, IIRC, charges were not quietly dropped, he was allowed into a pre-trial diversion program, no? IE, he’s on a sort of probation, if he can keep his nose clean the charges go away, but until then they’re merely in abeyance. If i’m not correct, please enlighten me – I haven’t been following this since day 1.
This is all separate from the public and professional consequences. Regardless of his legal defense options, he can and has been tried in the courts of public opinion, and his career and name are ruined, maybe rightfully so, maybe not. It really depends on his wife’s actual views of what happened; which is unknowable.
All that having been said, I’m not happy with the events as portrayed. Excusable or not in the most favorable case to him, he could have done better. I see no reason not to call his actions ungentlemanly, unchivalrous, and inconsiderate. There’s a difference between right and proper; he may have been right, but he wasn’t proper.
I think LEOs should wear body cams and the feeds should be streamed to their stations, and be available to ALL media and local people as well. That would help prevent out of context video edits, but to make it safer, I think the media that uses such a stream should be required to play the entire clip from start of contact to end of contact with no editing, under penalty of a $$ fine. $1 million? $5 million? Something stiff.
1A says they get to edit all they like; basically – I don’t want to get near the thought that you could be fined for an edited video; and if you think about it, you probably don’t as well.
Not to mention the privacy aspects. Like I said, I want body cams, but they’re neither the be-all/end-all nor without their own issues. If we managed to work them out for dashcams, we can work them out for body cams.
What’s getting lost in the discussion above is Bitter’s point. In the Shaneen Allen incident, there was no violence. No one was struck, there’s no need to debate whether someone was justified in using force or not. If we give the police the benefit of the doubt, then maybe she should have been more careful changing lanes. But for what is not even something you have to mention to an officer at a stop in many states, she’s facing a multi-year prison term and repercussions lasting years beyond that.
That’s pure insanity.
^^On that, you’ll hear no argument from me.^^
I have sent many dollars to her defense fund, so I am in complete agreement.
But the stories are not truly the same.
So the woman attacks him and he gets arrested and charged!! Why? Why wasn’t she arrested and charged. Why should a man “take it” if a woman attacks? Now I assume 90% or more of women and men will agree he shouldn’t hit her back so explain to me again why women are in the military??? Either they can rise to the occasion or they cannot. Either they are so weak and so in need of protection or they are not. How in the hell can they claim they are sooooo weak that no man should hit them even if they hit the man and then demand they should be in the military?
My other point about this is that if he committed a crime and the justice system runs it’s course what in the hell is his employer getting involved in this for. Should you get fired for running a red light or catching an undersized fish? That part of this story makes no sense at all. As much as I dislike trial lawyers maybe this is a case they should take on. It makes no sense for the employer to be meting out justice.
Well I’m sure most American servicemen and servicewomen agree that you shouldn’t hit a woman, but they aren’t the main problem here. Unfortunately, the Taliban routinely engage in the uncouth and lowborn practice of shooting at American servicewomen. That is why we issue rifles to women Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, and Airmen, so that they may defend their womanly honor by killing the Taliban. And, when they do an especially good job of it, we award them medals like the Silver Star. :D
So you see, there’s really no conflict between protecting women and honoring their military service. That said, it’s NOT what this story is about.
Why do our woman soldiers wear a Hijab? Makes them easier targets, huh?
And just to be absolutely 100% clear, the above is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. It’s not serious. Servicewomen are issued rifles because their job is to destroy the enemy just like everyone else.
what in the hell is his employer getting involved in this for. Should you get fired for running a red light or catching an undersized fish?
High profile jobs often have the catch-all, “looks bad and gives us bad press” wording in their contracts.
Neither of the things you mentioned would do that unless you were caught having sex with the undersized fish. Just because you got hired doesn’t mean you can never be fired.
Is there supposed to be an image here? Dont see it. Using iOS.
There’s a video of NFL player Ray Rice punching his pregnant fianceé so hard that she is knocked out as she hits the wall of the elevator.
… after having been attacked THREE times by his then fiancée.
Since she was pregnant, he shouldn’t have hit her. He should have just stopped all of her blows, either by blocking or grabbing her wrists. Hitting her while she is pregnant is the same as hitting his innocent child.
If she wasn’t pregnant I would not blame him at all really. In the words of the bus driver, if you want to be a man, I’ll treat you like a man. Women who want to be treated like women should not act like thugs and gang bangers.
I sort of agree. However he wrestled her into submission, it wouldn’t have looked good on camera. His only real choice was to run away from her like she was a linebacker instead of getting on that elevator.
If she was concerned about her pregnancy, she wouldn’t have been drinking or fistfighting with a man.
Which raises the question, since I haven’t paid enough attention to know – did he know at the time that she was pregnant? Did she know?
There doesn’t appear to be a lot of information available, but since they have another daughter and were engaged, (and now married) I believe that if she knew, he knew.
It all depends on how you handle it. I’ve stood my ground in front of a woman throwing her fists at me and found it easy enough to gently deflect each one to the side without hurting her, or myself, or having to physically restrain her. A professional athlete should find this incredibly easy to do.
I agree, she wasn’t concerned, and that sucks.