New Deadspin story on Greg Hardy

Or he's just a terrible human being ... or both.

 

Give me option three, please.

 

Bad DNA.

 

Do we really what Manti Te'o did to Lanny? No one has seen her lately

 

In the earlier thread on Ray Rice and Greg Hardy, I counseled caution on reading too much into the Greg Hardy's district court conviction alone, if only because I know how easy it is to get a guilty verdict at that stage based on flimsy evidence and because it is often not a final verdict due to a quirk in North Carolina criminal procedure.

In the eyes of North Carolina law, he was never found guilty. His appeal came within the appropriate time and he received the "de novo" jury trial he was entitled to. The state dismissed the charges before that new trial, so no conviction and his case is eligible to be expunged.

All that said: That's strong evidence. I am somewhat surprised the Mecklenburg DA's office didn't go for the felony charge of assault by strangulation based on what Deadspin has published today. That would have sidestepped the district court sideshow.

Or even if they didn't think they could prove the felony, there is a mechanism for the state to get straight to superior court on a misdemeanor when you expect that case to end up there. Given the likelihood that you'd only get one shot of this victim being cooperative, I also wonder why they didn't go that route.

 

I wasn't asking for a third option, I was selecting the third option -- both.

But I'll accept yours as well.

 

That's because Hardy can still play. Ray Rice is past his prime. If he wasn't, he'd be on a roster.

Teams don't give a shit about him damn near beating somebody to death. They just care if he can still play.

 

He missed the entire 2014 season on the exempt list right? So even though that's not a suspension in legal jargon he's lost 16+4 so 20 games.

He should probably be in jail. That's the justice system. The NFL can't well give him a lifetime ban, so how many games in enough? 20 seems like a decent number to me, in a vacuum.

 

He was fully paid last year. A true 20 game suspension means 20 weeks of no pay. Big difference.

 

NFL fans will be so angry that they'll almost do something.

 

Perhaps, but I bet he was plenty piqued that he couldn't go out there and assault people legally for 20 games.

 

He played in one game in 2014, but was paid for the entire season.