The Injustice of #Deflategate
Why Tom Brady shouldn’t be a special snowflake.
Patriots fans — myself included — are celebrating the fact that a Federal judge just vacated the NFL’s 4-game suspension of Tom Brady for his role in #Deflategate. Based on my Facebook and Twitter feeds, everyone else seems fed up. “He’s only getting off the hook because he’s Tom Brady,” seems to be the common refrain.
Personally, I’m glad that these issues are getting held up to the microscope. It’s absolutely true that Brady’s case is only getting this level of scrutiny because he’s a celebrity, but I think it’s making us focus on the wrong issues. The evidence against Brady is astonishingly light, and the suspension is based on the fact that he may have been “generally aware” that air pressure was being manipulated in the game balls. The investigation itself was neither rigorous nor independent.
We shouldn’t accept this as an investigatory and judicial standard for the NFL. We shouldn’t accept this as an investigatory and judicial standard anywhere.
The Patriots are basically the New York Yankees of football, so it doesn’t surprise me that there was a lot of glee over Brady’s comeuppance and subsequent outrage over the discarding of that punishment. But still, non-New England fans, I ask you: wouldn’t it feel better to uphold a due process and evidence-based suspension?
And New England fans, if you think a higher level of scrutiny of the case against Brady is warranted, shouldn’t we call for that higher level of scrutiny in all cases, for all people?
In the US, we regularly send people to jail for really long periods of time based on unreliable witness testimony, circumstantial evidence, and, at times, mere proximity to someone who has committed a crime.
We also have the Felony Murder Rule in the US, which has led to highly disturbing consequences like a man named Ryan Holle being sentenced to life in prison for lending his car to his roomate:
What the Felony Murder Rule essentially says is if anyone has anything to do with a felony in which a murder takes place, such as a robbery, that person is as guilty as the person who has committed the murder…. Exactly what did Ryan Holle do? At a party in his apartment over ten years ago, he lent his car to his roommate and went to sleep. He had lent his car to his roommate many times before with no negative consequences. This time the roommate and others went to a house where they knew a woman was selling marijuana from a safe. They planned to get the marijuana, but in the course of their break-in a teenage girl was killed. Those at the scene all received appropriately harsh sentences, but so did Ryan Holle.
Here is someone who, clearly, has far less of a connection to any misdeed than Tom Brady, yet he’ll be spending the rest of his life in jail.
Yes, the NFL is a private entity. Yes, at the heart of Brady’s dispute is a private employment contract, not a criminal justice case. However, I think this gives us a larger opportunity to discuss what due process and fair punishments should look like in our country. Not all of us will have lawyers like Brady.
