RockyMountainSaint

Anthony Hargrove's declaration to NFL regarding Saints bounty scandal - Yahoo! Sports

Sorry, it won't allow me to copy and paste.

The gist of it is that he was coerced into lying by Williams and Vitt with the implied promise to become the starting LDE.

If this is true then GW and Vitt are pretty scummy.

TheOak

And if true... A lot of people "assumed" the coercion came from the NFL...

TheOak

Also..... Since that statement was taken in 2010...

MOOT

Based on the 2011 CBA

TheOak

Another out of the box thought.... In legal ease, if i understand correctly.... When an originating piece of evidence is ruled out for some reason then all knowledge gained from that original piece is not admissible either?

E.G... this all started in 2009/2010 so anything found after the new CBA in 2011 would be moot also by basis of origin?

Need a lawyer to vet this thought please.

RockyMountainSaint

OK. Granted, the lawyer here is Mike Florio, but he breaks it down well. He blasts the league.

Hargrove says Williams, Vitt told him to
Now for what Hargrove’s declaration doesn’t say. At no point in the declaration does Hargrove admit to any knowledge of the existence of a bounty program. Indeed, at no point does Hargrove claim that he was told to say anything different from what he would have otherwise said, without coaching.

In other words, Hargrove never says he was told to lie. Instead, he says he was told what to say, without commenting on whether he believed what he was told to say to be the truth.

And so, when the NFL said last week in the announcement of the suspensions of Hargrove and three other players that the declaration “established not only the existence of the program with the Saints, but also that he knew about and participated in it,” that statement was blatantly incorrect. And when “independent” counsel Mary Jo White explained in a conference call last week that the “thrust” of the declaration was Hargrove’s acknowledgment of “the nature of the program and his participation in it,” that was blatantly incorrect, too.

It may simply be semantics, given that Williams and Vitt apparently confessed to the existence of a bounty program — which necessarily means that Hargrove had lied. But in his declaration he never says that he lied, and he never admits that the bounty program existed.

The flaw in the NFL’s comments about the Hargrove declaration is subtle, but significant. The plain language of the Hargrove declaration as compared to the NFL’s characterization of it shows that the league is playing a little fast and loose with the facts. Which makes it even more critical that the league stop spoon-feeding the NFLPA and the media characterizations and summaries and conclusions, and that it start coughing up the raw data on which the characterizations and summaries and conclusions were based.

Back when I was practicing law, I’d periodically explain to a jury that, upon encountering a piece of rancid meat in a pot of beef stew, the reaction isn’t to keep eating but to dump it all out. Though the league’s mischaracterization of Hargrove’s declaration may not justify ignoring the full weight of the bounty evidence, it means that, at a minimum, someone must have an opportunity to scrutinize all facts, apart from the skewed, self-serving filter the league has applied when talking about the case.

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CharityMike

This is getting juicy

SaintsBro

Yeah, it really helps if you read it over again a second time -- he doesn't actually ever say that there WAS a bounty program, or that there wasn't a bounty program. And yet the league is acting as if he somehow did admit to it in this statement.

AsylumGuido

Here is the famous declaration. Now you know why Williams and Vitt were suspended. But, this does not confirm that Hargrove was aware of any bounty program. He simply says he said what he was told to say by the coaches.

Anthony Hargrove's declaration to NFL regarding Saints bounty scandal

CharityMike

This is a prime example of why the players should not have gotten punished. He was doing as told by his boss with the expectation of a reward for being a good soldier. I bet Hargrove is hiding in a hole somewhere now thanks to all this b.s.

AsylumGuido

Why would he hide? Read the declaration closely. No where does he admit to there actually being a bounty program. He could have been telling the absolute truth and still followed orders.