How many games will DeShaun Watson be suspended?

Sorry but it reinforces the perspective that I can truly dislike a person and never have met them.
If the NFL had any air in their balls then they should pass him by.

All of them—pending the outcome of a criminal trial? It sounds like this guy belongs in a cage—certainly not signing autographs and pretending to be a role-model for kids.

@gorillapaws Two grand juries would not indict him so there may not be a criminal trial. The 24 cases against him now are civil.

@malcomkade I wasn’t aware of that.

Something smells very wrong when 24 women can accuse a man of sexual assault and 2 separate grad juries don’t find enough evidence to even initiate a trial…

@gorillapaws I agree

I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, he is likely a perv and his behavior should be enough to get him banned for life from football, or at least until he has completed psychological treatment. On the other hand, what does it say about our country that a man can be punished for accusations? As was mentioned, his case was sent to two grand juries and they refused to indict. To me that says the evidence available is insufficient to prove wrongdoing. So what you have is a bunch of women accusing him of something without evidence. So they are suing him for monetary gain on the hope they can get juries that will say he is guilty unless he can prove his innocence.

@seawulf575 I’m not a lawyer, but my understanding is that the threshold for a Grand Jury to indict is extremely low. Just one credible witness making the accusation I would think would be sufficient to move forward with a trial. The odds that all 24 were entirely discredited, especially when considered as a group—indicating a pattern of behavior, boggles the mind. Either the prosecutor is the most incompetent attorney ever to pass the bar, some shenanigans were going on behind the scenes, or the juries were somehow more concerned with preserving football bragging rights than justice?

Hell, you could have 24 women being treated in a psych ward for delusions and hallucinations that accused someone of sexual assault and I guarantee you that guy would be on trial at the minimum. It’s just too many accusers for it to be entirely dismissed as unworthy of prosecution.

@gorillapaws I did a little research (shocking!) into grand juries. In a grand jury, the panel is presented only the prosecutor’s case. It isn’t a trial. There is no defense presentation. They are trying to determine if the prosecutor has enough objective evidence to proceed with criminal charges. Twice this was done with Watson and twice it came back as a decision there wasn’t enough evidence.

But your statement shows how far down the rabbit hole this country has gone. “Hell, you could have 24 women being treated in a psych ward for delusions and hallucinations that accused someone of sexual assault and I guarantee you that guy would be on trial at the minimum.” Your reasoning is that all it takes is accusation and the guy has to prove his innocence. The burden of proof is always on the prosecution…on the accusers. And apparently there wasn’t enough proof to move forward with criminal charges…the prosecution couldn’t prove their case. But civil cases are an entirely different story. Look at OJ Simpson. He beat the criminal charges, but lost in the civil cases. Civil cases tend to go more towards emotion rather than fact.

@seawulf575 “Your reasoning is that all it takes is accusation and the guy has to prove his innocence”

Wait, what? When did I say the burden of proof becomes inverted?

All I said was there should be a trial if there’s a credible accusation. One credible witness saying “that man showed his dick to my kid” should be sufficient evidence to bring him to trial. You don’t need video footage of the crime to indict.

My understanding is the standard is something like: is there sufficient evidence that a reasonable person would suspect the accused of committing a felony? One credible eyewitness I would think is sufficient to reach that (extremely minimal) reasonable suspicion threshold, let alone 24 eyewitnesses. So either all 24 accusers are entirely not credible (individually and collectively) or there were favors exchanged behind the scenes to deliberately torpedo the case, or the prosecution was extremely incompetent (2x), or the jury was too starstruck to complete their civic duty (2x), or something else? It really does boggle the mind. The odds that 24 women are all committing perjury would be astronomically low.

@gorillapaws I cited what you said. if 24 women from a psych ward for delusions and hallucinations accused a guy of sexual assault the guy would be going to trial. It doesn’t matter the caliber of the woman, doesn’t matter if they are legit, doesn’t matter if any of it is true. They accused so he should have to go to trial to defend himself…prove his innocence. Because when there is no credibility present in the accusations and society gives them credence, then the guy is already deemed guilty and has to prove otherwise. That is what that statement is saying.

That isn’t saying these women are lying, nor that they are not credible or anything like that. I don’t know these women. But I do know that 2 separate grand juries did not conclude there was enough evidence to show he was guilty.

What are the possibilities in this case? 1. That Watson is a slime bag figuring his fame is his free pass to being a groping asshole. 2. That nothing happened and all 24 women are lying for no reason. 3. That they propositioned him and he turned them down and they are in a snit. 4. He propositioned them and they turned him down and then got into a snit. 5. That they recognized who he was and saw a potential financial gain. Did I miss any? I don’t know the people so I cannot say which of these is the likely answer. My feeling (again not knowing the history) is that he probably groped one or two of them and they made a stink about it. After that many others saw a potential gain and said the same thing happened. After all, with 24, they must be telling the truth, right?

@seawulf575 “They accused so he should have to go to trial…”

Yes. I did say that.

”...to defend himself…prove his innocence.”

No, I never said this. It’s still the prosecution’s job to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and the defendant is still afforded the presumption of innocence throughout the trial. None of that changes just because the accusation rose above the very low threshold of reasonable suspicion required for a grand jury to indict. There’s an expression that a decent prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. The bar is very low, which is why it’s so hard to imagine 2 grand juries declining to indict unless something weird was going on.

And yes, if there were 24 women in a psych ward all suffering from delusions and hallucinations who all accused one of the staff of sexual impropriety, that would certainly be sufficient for me to say a reasonable person would be suspicious that the staff member was assaulting them.

@gorillapaws Sooo…you are okay with accepting any accusations as proof enough for a trial but are not okay with an actual grand jury doing its job, if that job doesn’t come up with the answer you think it should?

@seawulf575 I’m not a lawyer. My opinions are based on possibly inaccurate understandings of the law.

As I understand things, the burden of proof for a grand jury to indict is extremely low: reasonable suspicion. I would think 1 reasonably credible witness making an accusation would rise above that threshold. When you have 24 people making the claim, logic would dictate that at least SOME of the accusers would cross that credibility threshold to say “yeah, I think a reasonable person could suspect this guy did this.” The fact that 2 grand juries didn’t reach this conclusion to me indicates it’s much more likely that the prosecution was incompetent (possibly intentionally so) than there being insufficient credible evidence to support an indictment. But I wasn’t there, I didn’t see the evidence or listen to the testimony. This is a guess based on general knowledge that it would be extremely unlikely that 24 people would accuse someone of something and all being wrong.

@gorillapaws I think the problem you are seeing with the grand jury is that you are viewing a credible witness as something that would be brought forth. I don’t believe that is the case. The jury is looking for reasonable suspicion based on objective evidence. If you have someone accusing I believe that is subjective…does a jury feel they are credible. So if you have accusations and zero other evidence, that might be enough to shoot down the case for criminal charges. But those accusations can be brought in civil cases and it is then up to the jury of that (those) trial(s) to decide if they are credible or if he is.