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A federal magistrate judge has ordered NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to provide the court with documents related to the league's bounty investigation of the New Orleans Saints.

The order by Magistrate Daniel Knowles on Tuesday came in response to suspended linebacker Jonathan Vilma's efforts to initiate the discovery process in his defamation case against the commissioner. Vilma has said the NFL has allowed him to review only a fraction of documents related to bounty matter.

Knowles issued a compromise order in which only the court, and not Vilma, may see the documents -- including reports of interviews with witnesses -- before a subsequent order is made on whether to allow discovery to proceed.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said league officials have already discussed the order with Knowles and have agreed to comply.

Judge wants to see NFL bounty documents - ESPN

stickman

Interesting. Still, nothing we'll ever see.

saintsfan1976

Attorneys for the punished players say those two witnesses lack credibility because Williams is suspended indefinitely and his reinstatement hinges on his cooperation, and because Cerullo was fired by the Saints and had a vendetta against the club.

All four of the players are technically eligible to play this weekend because their appeals of their suspensions within the framework of the NFL's labor agreement are pending. Goodell has scheduled their appeal hearings for Oct. 23 and could rule soon afterward.

In the meantime, the players are hoping U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan will ultimately issue a ruling that voids Goodell's decision to suspend the players and order a neutral arbitrator to handle any further discipline in the matter

dizzle88

This is the part where goodell goes oops, you know when we said we had 50,000 pages of proof.......we lied

Danno

Maybe not, if its 3 words per page.

TXGSP

At least the documents will be "OUT" of sole control by the league. If the judge deems the information important there is little choice other than to release the documents.

Defining the Legal requirements surrounding the documents is going to be interesting.

All the press releases and public statements will definately come back into play if/when this hits a courtroom.

TheOak

Even then that is a Power Point file too big to email.

jnormand

I hope it pans out well. But I guess if it doesn't we can move on. I don't see a whole lot of options if the judge stands by the POS Goodell.

TheDeuce

How could this have taken so long? This is the first time that ACTUAL PROOF has been required. Before this point, Goodell could have been holding a folder with ten copies of his favorite Spider-Man comic books inside that he was calling "evidence."

Utah_Saint

I wonder what the reasoning is behind continuing to keep them secret. Goodell already threw Jimmy Kennedy under the bus, and according to Kennedy just flat out made things up. Roger can't expect anybody to believe he's still worried about protecting his source. It looks like he doesn't give a damn about his source.