The 17-page judge's decision reveals that Roger Goodell had a thin case to back his assertion that Ray Rice misled the him and the NFL.
Judge Barbara Jones didn't surprise anyone by what she ruled Tuesday -- that Ray Rice should be reinstated from an indefinite suspension. The surprise came in what she revealed in her 17-page explanation of the decision. Not only did Jones find that Rice was honest with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell during their June 16 meeting, but the NFL's case was incredibly flimsy, built on semantic arguments and poor note taking.
There are several significant (and/or head-scratching) takeaways revealed in the decision. The thrust is that Goodell and the NFL were unprepared to defend why it raised Rice's suspension upon the release of a second video tape depicting his assault on his fiancee in an Atlantic City casino elevator.
Rice physically demonstrated how he hit Janay Palmer
Jones wrote that her job was to determine whether Rice misled Goodell and the NFL about the events of Feb. 15 in Atlantic City. To do, she had to consider two things: "(1) whether [Rice] said 'hit' or attempted to minimize the assault by saying 'slapped' and (2) whether he said that Mrs. Rice "knocked herself out."
Rice also demonstrated how he struck Palmer, however, and apparently there was little ambiguity in his actions.
At the arbitration hearing, Rice demonstrated with his left arm how he hit Mrs. Rice that night, swinging it in an arc across his body with his hand open. Tr. 470:9-21. More significantly, he testified that he had given the same demonstration at the June 16 meeting when he told the Commissioner about the events, making it clear that his arm "came across" his body and hit her.
The NFL took awful notes
A key point in the NFL's argument was that Rice had said he "slapped" Palmer instead of "hit." To make this point, however, the NFL relied on fuzzy recollection and poor note-taking by those in attendance at the June 18 meeting. Goodell never used the word "slap" in his notes, but did use the word "struck." Adolpho Birch, another witness to the meeting and the NFL's senior vice president of labor policy and government affairs, wrote just two words that day.
Birch's notes are even sparser, with the phrase "bottle service" the only reference to the night of the assault.
Kevin Manara, the NFL's senior labor relations counsel, was much more thorough as the NFL's official note taker at the meeting. He did use the word "slapped," but he failed to note whether what he wrote was Rice's phrasing verbatim.
In relevant part, Manara's notes read, in six successive lines: "arguing while waiting for elevator / exchanging words / she hit him / got in elevator / she hit him again / he slapped her; fell; knocked herself out." Exhibit 17. While Manara was a credible witness, I am not persuaded that his notes reliably report that Rice used the words "knocked herself out." For example, although Manara's notes use "slapped," the majority of the witnesses, including Newsome and Birch, used the word "hit" to describe what Rice said. Manara himself admitted that the section of his notes describing the assault was not "verbatim."
Heather McPhee, the associate general counsel of the NFLPA, also took notes at the meeting, and put Rice's phrasing in quotation marks, which she said indicated something he said verbatim. The emphasis on the relevant quote is McPhee's.
The following are the relevant part of McPhee's notes, written with the emphasis and quotation marks as they appear in the original:
- Exchanged words/arguing @ elevators
- Ray thinks Janay "sort of slapped @ him"
- Entered elevator, still arguing
- Shoes (?) off
- Janay moved toward him, "sort of slapped or swung"
- "And then I hit her."
- She fell, thinks hit head on railing
- Seemed "knocked out"
- Elevator opened, she wasn't conscious, pulled her out
- Security there almost immediately. Called agent.
- Arrested that night. (Both)Exhibit 41 at NFLPA_RICE_0037.
The NFL was uncertain of its own testimony
Goodell and Manara both maintained that Rice had used the word "slapped" during the June meeting. Birch wasn't nearly as sure.
Birch testified that he remembered Rice saying that Mrs. Rice "hit him outside of the elevator, they got in the elevator, she hit him again, then he, I don't know what word he used, but he hit her, and [] she lost her balance, fell[,] hit her head on the side of the handrail, knocked herself out, something like that."
Even Goodell apparently came off as uncertain.
The testimony of Commissioner Goodell and Birch is further diminished by thevagueness of their recollections. For example, when asked whether Rice used the word "struck"to describe Mrs. Rice hitting him, Commissioner Goodell testified, "I believe so, it has been several months."
Jones found whether Rice knocked out Palmer irrelevant
The NFL also argued that Rice insisted that Palmer had been knocked unconscious when she fell and her head hit a handrail, and thus tried to minimize his role in the incident. Jones wasn't moved.
To the extent the NFL argues that Rice misled the Commissioner because he"‘chronologically' described the sequence of events leading to his arrest ... , [but] never explained ‘causally' what happened that night," NFL Post-Hearing Br. at 1, this argument fails. Certainly, no one can say with medical certainty whether the blow itself or the contact with the handrail knocked Mrs. Rice unconscious. Tr. 153:24-154:6. But just as certainly, it is immaterial. Whether the blow itself or hitting the railing knocked Mrs. Rice unconscious, the cause was the hit.
...
Commissioner Goodell himself, in response to the question, "Did Mr. Rice ever say that heknocked out Ms. Palmer?," testified, "No, but he took full responsibility for it, he said it is nother fault, it is my fault." Tr. 95:5-9. In short, I do not find that Rice minimized "causally" what happened that night.
Goodell could have asked Rice for the tape inside the elevator
Jones:
They believed that there was a second video from a camera inside the elevator. Various sources, including NFL security, had reported its existence. Rice had received this video in discovery during his criminal case, but it had not been aired publicly, as had the first video. The NFL never asked Rice for the second video.
Goodell assured Rice about the length of his first suspension
The NFL also assured Rice that his suspension would not be increased under the new domestic violence policy.
Notably, after announcing this increased penalty under the Policy, the Commissioner called Rice to assure him that the new policy would not affect him-that it was forward looking and his penalty would not be increased.
A report in September from ESPN's Outside the Lines said that the Ravens, including owner Steve Bisciotti, lobbied Goodell to be lenient with Rice's punishment.
Goodell doesn't need just cause
Jones dissected Article 46 of the NFL collective bargaining agreement which outlines the commissioner's disciplinary power. The article does not say that Goodell needs just cause, which is significant, because the CBA discusses just cause in Article 43 concerning club discipline. Jones highlights just how much leeway Goodell has to mete out punishment as he sees fit.
There are still reasonable limits to what the commissioner can reasonably do, however, though the language of the CBA forces players to assume the burden of proof when challenging discipline.
Even accepting that Article 46 does not contain a just cause provision and thus is not subject to the attendant standards of industrial due process, such as "double discipline" and"disparate treatment," discipline under the Article must be fair and consistent.
The NFL does not dispute this proposition. ... For me, this means that discipline determinations under Article 46 should be reviewed to determine whether the Commissioner abused his discretion, that is, whether his determination was arbitrary or capricious. Where the imposition of discipline is not fair or consistent, an abuse of discretion has occurred.
Jones found that the NFLPA the burden of proof at the hearing, and that "the imposition of a second suspension based upon the same incident, and the same known facts about that incident, was arbitrary.
Janay Palmer was distressed at the meeting
Jones:
On June 16, when Birch directed the conversation to her and asked how she felt, she couldn't speak; she just cried and said "I'm just ready for it to be over."
That's considerably different than a July report from Peter King at Sports Illustrated's MMQB which said Janay Rice "made a moving and apparently convincing case to Goodell" at Rice's disciplinary hearing in June. King's report also said that she pleaded with the commissioner not to ruin Rice's "career and image" with his punishment.
The NFL was overly beholden to precedent
Jones cited an ESPN Radio interview that Birch gave saying "we are bound in large part by precedent in prior cases, decisions that have been heard on appeal in the past, and notions of fairness and appropriateness." In his testimony, Goodell acknowledged that the NFL need to "go back and say, . . . ‘[W]e are in a different age, with different issues and different challenges.'"
Jones agreed, and her decision spoke to a much larger issue of how accounts of domestic violence have been interpreted in the past:
Moreover, any failure on the part of the League to understand the level of violence was not due to Rice's description of the event, but to the inadequacy of words to convey the seriousness of domestic violence. That the League did not realize the severity of the conduct without a visual record also speaks to their admitted failure in the past to sanction this type of conduct more severely.
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