PETA Decides Vick Doesn’t Deserve Due Process
PETA has said they are going to “converge” on NFL offices to demand that Vick be suspended, even though he has not yet been convicted of anything. Beautiful.
Dogfighting is a coward’s blood sport that deserves harsh punishment, no matter how famous the alleged perpetrators are
I hate to say this, but for once I actually agree with PETA’s statement above. That still doesn’t change the fact that Vick deserves a trial before he is punished. Commissioner Goodell has proven with cases like Pac Man Jones that he’s not willing to give these a guy a free pass on their behavior.
Commissioner Goodell is also determined “to exercise patience, something Duke did not do when three of its players were indicted and the school cancelled its lacrosse season.” Imagine that. Giving someone a fair trial instead of convicting them in the court of public opinion. What a novel idea.
I am quite confident, given Commissioner Goodell’s track record, he will do the right thing if Vick is found guilty. Maybe PETA needs to review the Duke case to better undestand why we have due process.
Commissioner Goodell has suspended Pacman Jones without Jones being convicted of the crime he perpetrated. Goodell cited a pattern of bad behavior. Vick also has a pattern of behavior, such as trying to sneak marijuana through an airport security checkpoint. This screams not of a dedication to due process, but to star treatment, and PETA is correct here.
July 20th, 2007 at 7:09 amActually, there is a big differnce. Pacman was arrested 5 times in under two years and has already been convicted of 1 misdemeanor. Vick was not arrested or charged in the marijuana case.
That leaves the number of Pacman arrests at 5 and current convictions at 1, indicating a pattern of bad behavior. That leaves Vick arrests at 0 and convictions at 0. Not really much of a pattern.
July 20th, 2007 at 7:24 amWell, there are also the lawsuits for knowlingly transmitting an STD and the bird flipping at fans. If you’re claiming Vick is anywhere near a model citizen, you’re not close. Also, the charges are totally and completely disgusting and heinous. Add the cooperating witnesses to go along with them (four, as I understand) and I think Goodell is making a very big mistake not shutting the guy down. The NFL’s rep is pretty bad in the player behavior department. Only Ray Lewis and Rae Carruth spring to mind as having been charged with something worse, but the new commish and his hard attitude chooses to do nothing? Sounds like something only the second highest player in the league would have the good fortune of benefitting from.
July 20th, 2007 at 8:32 amNever claimed he was a model citizen. Model citizen or not, he deserves a fair trial. I’m not sure if you remember the Duke rape case, but an entire team lost their season over a stripper who lied. Are you incapable of learning from past mistakes? I guess liberals will also assume the rich and famous are automatically guilty if charged. Fair trials only apply to the poor.
July 20th, 2007 at 8:58 amGoodell’s position is not a legal one. He’s running a private organization and should reserve the right to handle it how he sees fit, right? He also has an obligation to his customers to do the right thing. That right thing includes telling a scumbag to hit the road. Comparing this to Duke is inaccurate and unfair. The Duke guys were railroaded in the legal system. The NFL is not the legal system. And the new commissioner is not applying his philosophy fairly. And let’s not forget that Michael Vick told the commissioner to his face that he had no knowledge of the dogfighting going on ON HIS OWN PROPERTY, only to be later indicted and have multiple witnesses (not one lying stripper, as you eloquently pointed out about Duke) come forward. One consolation is that Vick will have to play in front of a lot of fans who happen to like dogs. He’ll get his.
Bringing in the liberal crap is weak. By bringing that into play, you’ve pretty much admitted that politics are your motivation here. What’s the matter, does it not compute that PETA might be on the right side of an issue? Todd, I was trying to discuss it and lay a lot of things on the table. But if you’re just going to run behind what you think my political beliefs are, then forget it.
July 20th, 2007 at 9:09 amDuke lacrosse was not only a legal issue, but a private one. The president of the school decided to suspend the team. That was not directed by the court or anything like that. It is a very fair comparison. The president of Duke has now been forced to admit he made a mistake, a position the NFL is wise to try to avoid taking.
IF Vick is guilty, PETA is very right in their position, as I stated in my post. Why is it not possible to you that maybe there are parts to the story here which are not yet revealed, that may prove Vick innocent? Witnesses can be vengeful and can claim to have seen things that they didn’t. Only a trial can tell us who is telling the truth.
By the way, this is a very political issue and that is my motivation. It’s people like PETA and the left that are quick to convict a wealthy person in the court of public opinion then show up to free Tookie Williams (a convicted killer) before his execution. This has everything to do with politics and assuming, based on someone’s income or position, that they must be guilty.
July 20th, 2007 at 9:25 amThe Duke issue is not the same. This is a federal case and Vick has been investigated for several months. This has nothing to do with how much money someone has. That’s crazy. It has to do with a human being taking living creatures, training them to fight then taking the weak ones and electrocuting them, hanging them til they die, and shooting them. That is what is at issue. I guarentee if it were Joe Shmoe down the street and this hit, the same anger would surface. In addtion, the feds don’t bring an indictment unless they are 99% sure of a conviction. What kind of myopic idiot would think this is about politics and money. This is about a person who agreed to a code of conduct and can’t even abide by a semblence of decency in their way of acting.
July 20th, 2007 at 11:24 amIt has everything to do with who he is, money, and politics. I would advocate that you withold your judgement regardless of who he is until there is a trial. Whether it be Vick or Joe Shmoe.
The difference is, you and your pals who have already convicted Vick would be up in arms if a lower class guy in a poor neighborhood lost his job without a trial, but you will advocate it for Vick. Your justice is dependent on a person position in society.
IF Vick did all these things, it’s brutal and he deserves his punishment. And if you had done your homework, you would know the fed’s conviction rate is 96%, not 99%. That still means 4% of those people, for all intents and purposes, did not commit those crimes. Vick deserves his day in court to prove if he is in that 4% before he gets punished.
July 20th, 2007 at 12:12 pmPETA showed up to protest Tookie Williams’ execution? Or are we lumping “all groups Todd doesn’t agree with” together?
July 20th, 2007 at 12:58 pmNice try at twisting my words. I clearly said “It’s people like PETA and the left”. Like, meaning similar to. And the left, meaning liberals. So no, I didn’t say that PETA showed up to Tookie’s execution. Though PETA probably should have shown up; the guy was an animal.
Seriously though, I guess we should just toss out the whole trial proccess and innocent until proven guilty, since the feds are always right anyway. In fact, we should just let the commissioner of the NFL decide who’s guilty in every federal case. Things would be much simpler that way.
July 20th, 2007 at 1:15 pmGood point, Todd. The commissioner, until this incident, has done a stellar job in attempting to clean up the NFL. He might run society in a favorable way as well. My next door neighbors would probably be high on his list of suspensions, and I’d like that.
Interesting thing going on here. The NFL commissioner should not make decisions about, let’s say, “Michael Vick and people like him,” but Todd is perfectly fine by lumping PETA, who I feel the need to point out is correct in this case, and the groups that protested Tookie Williams’ execution. You know, “groups like them.”
Seriously though, Todd, I think we’re both right here. Your point is fair. He hasn’t been convicted yet. My point that the NFL could easily win a major PR coup by suspending him is also fair. It’s certainly within their rights to do so. As a marginal NFL fan, I’ve always been turned off by Vick anyway. This just makes me less likely to care about the league than I was before, which wasn’t much to begin with. I also associate a lot of Vick’s attitude to that of his family. His brother is a scumbag and whenever I think of Michael, or “Mike” as he insists on being called, or “Ron Mexico” which is my preferred name for him, I think about his brother pulling a gun on some kids at a Taco Bell. Overall, I have low feelings for them in general, so I tend to think he’s guilty because it seems so damn plausible.
July 20th, 2007 at 4:32 pm