kearly":p5mjdkb5 said:
hawknation2015":p5mjdkb5 said:
It really depends on the jury, but the standard is the standard. A criminal defendant can also waive his right to a jury trial in favor of a bench trial if he wanted to . . . the Seventh Amendment also guarantees the right to a jury trial in federal civil cases with remedies under the common law, and most states guarantee a jury trial in some civil cases.
All that said, it would be a little tough to convict Brady under a beyond a reasonable doubt standard. There is nothing right now directly trying him to the deflation. There are the suspicious text messages related to autographed memorabilia. There are the suspicious number of phone calls between Brady and the equipment manager. There are the suspicious explanations for the text messages from those staff members. There are Brady's suspicious explanations during his press conference. And there is the suspicious destruction of his cell phone. That is enough for reasonable suspicion, but I am not so sure there would be a clear absence of "reasonable doubt."
Under the much lower civil standard, however, I don't think there is any question that it is more likely than not that Brady was involved in the cheating. The evidence points in that direction.
Fair points. The sad thing is, that's exactly what the Wells report concluded. The judge overturned it anyway even though the report was completely reasonable.
Reasonable? Here's one of those "reasonable" statements from the Wells report:
"our scientific consultants informed us that the data alone did not provide a basis for them to determine with absolute certainty whether there was or was not tampering, as the analysis of such data is ultimately dependent upon assumptions and information that is uncertain."
So that is saying that it's a coin flip whether ANY tampering occurred, as opposed to just natural deflation at work.
Also, if Wells accepted Walt Anderson's testimony about which gauge he used to measure balls pre-game, this prosecution would have had to stop right there, as the readings from that gauge exonerated NE. However, he chose to go with the reading of the other gauge which Anderson recalled NOT using and which measured .4 psi higher, putting NE slightly in the red zone so to speak. Wells provides no justification for why he did this.
So that is saying that he intentionally used the wrong readings in order to further his prosecution.
Just wondering if the definition of reasonable is a little different in the great Northwest.