Actual Guilt v Legal Guilt: and the winner is...

By Joseph Walther

Have you heard? Michael Vick, first-string quarterback for the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons, has entered a plea of guilty to, um… I’m not sure what. Yes, the Feds charged him with a bunch of stuff: funding a dog fighting operation, dog fighting, gambling, cruelty to animals, and conspiracy to do this stuff.

The maximum sentence, if found guilty on all charges, is 5-years and a $250,000 fine. However, the Commonwealth of Virginia has much stricter laws, in that the cruelty charges carry a maximum of 5-years per each charge. Of course, they’ve weighed in and will be presenting their evidence to a grand jury soon.

I’ve received about two-boatloads of email about this; most of it from people advocating the death penalty for Vick. “He’s pled guilty to the federal charges. That seals it. He can’t go back to Virginia and plead not guilty, now,” wrote Howard from Atlanta, GA.

At the outset, I think that Michael Vick is as guilty as hell on all charges. I also think that what he did is despicable. I’d support a lifetime ban from the NFL in a heartbeat. And, I’d have no problems with him receiving the maximum allowable sentence and fine if convicted.

However, this is MY personal opinion. It, along with around $2 will buy me a 20-oz cup of coffee at most coffee shops—but, not Starbucks. I sincerely hope that you’re sitting down because what follows is a real shocker. YOUR personal opinions carry the same amount of weight as mine!

Lawyers, the competent ones that people with Vick’s financial resources can hire, spend years honing the fine art of obfuscation. Humans are not born with the ability to write seemingly simple, straightforward declarative sentences that have the ability to change meaning with each reread.

This is why it is critical for everyone to understand, precisely, what Michael Vick pleaded guilty to doing. The actual plea agreement not only minimizes the legal impact for Vick quite adequately, but also leaves the door wide open for him to plead not guilty to anything the Commonwealth of Virginia seeks to bring against him.

I made the statement, in another article; “Government lawyers blinked but Vick’s lawyers blinked first.” Some people interpreted this to mean that Vick’s lawyers screwed up. Wrong! No, not only did they not screw up, so far, they’ve made the best of a very bad situation.

Michael Vick’s statement of fact (aka plea agreement) admitted to his sponsoring a dog fighting operation and that he was part of a “collective effort” that caused the death of at least six dogs.

His lawyers made sure that his specific denials of gambling, directly or indirectly, made it into the plea. They made sure of some other things, too.

A direct involvement in causing the death of six dogs and being part of a “collective effort” to do so, are not the same thing, legally speaking. His lawyers knew this and made sure that the distinction became part of the plea agreement.

This distinction is important because in the Commonwealth of Virginia, cruelty to animals is a felonious charge, carrying a maximum of 5-years per count. Do the arithmetic: 6-dogs times 5-years for each one, IF CONVICTED.

Vick’s federal plea agreement, in no way, precludes him from pleading not guilty to anything the Commonwealth of Virginia throws at him. His co-defendants said, unambiguously, that they, with Michael Vick’s help, killed six dogs that did not perform to standards.

Specifically, they said; “All three of them participated in the killing of dogs.” It simply does not get any more straightforward than this. Unfortunately, things become “iffy” in a jiffy as soon as high-priced, competent lawyers become involved.

Vick’s statement of fact admits to no such thing. It reads; “Peace, Phillips, and Vick agreed to the killing of approximately 6-8 dogs that did not perform well in ‘testing’ sessions at 1915 Moonlight Road and all of those dogs were killed by various methods, including drowning and hanging. Vick agrees and stipulates that these dogs all died as a result of the collective efforts of Peace, Phillips, and Vick.”

In the United States, there is a difference between violating the “spirit” of laws, and violating the “letter” of those same laws.

The former requires the simple application of some common sense. A simple preponderance of the evidence usually suffices. A preponderance of the evidence means that, given the weight of the facts at hand, is it more likely than not that a defendant acted as charged.

However, in matters criminal, neither the “spirit” of the law nor a preponderance of the evidence has any bearing on legal guilt. “Beyond a reasonable doubt” is the only thing that matters. This doesn’t mean “NO” doubt; it means, simply, that given the facts at hand, do they give a reasonable person pause to wonder.

Competent lawyers cost a lot of money because people pay them for their skills at flicking fly-shit out of pepper and making sure that juries see the defense’s version of what constitutes “fly-shit” and what constitutes culpable fact.

Whether you consider such skills as remarkable and good versus detestable and evil, depends on whether your seat is at the defense table or the prosecutor’s table; whether you believe in the “innocence” of a defendant or whether you’re a victim of the defendant’s alleged crime.

No matter, the Michael Vick case is far from resolved. It will eventually reach legal resolution, though. However, no matter what that entails, for some people, Michael Vick will forever represent a system out to make an example of him, while for others, no amount of jail time will ever suffice, given the nature of the things he’s admitted to doing.

The task right now, though, is for all of us to figure out exactly what he’s admitted to doing.

I’ve never been a Vick fan. I’ve always rooted for the blitzers when it came to his quarterbacking. Now that he’s admitted to whatever it is that he’s admitted to doing, instead of rooting for blitzers to break one of his legs, I’d be hoping that they’d break both of them. This assumes, however, that the NFL ever permits him back onto a professional football field as a competitor.

I’m going to keep following this one. It’ll be interesting to see what the Commonwealth of Virginia does in the coming months. I don’t think that the judge in his federal sentencing will simply slap his wrists.

As for the Commonwealth of Virginia’s case, it’s going to depend on which side’s lawyers are better at flicking that fly-shit out of pepper. Hopefully, the Virginia prosecutors will be much better at it than were the California prosecutors in the O. J. Simpson case. But, I wouldn’t count on it.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Copyright laws apply to all material on this site. Send your comments. Just click here.