Taylor to have plea agreement hearing on Monday
Posted: Friday July 27, 2007 9:02PM; Updated: Friday July 27, 2007 9:45PMRICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- One of Michael Vick's co-defendants doesn't want to wait for trial.
Instead, a plea agreement hearing has been scheduled for Tony Taylor at 9 a.m. Monday in the federal dogfighting conspiracy case.
Taylor's hearing was added to U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson's docket Friday, a day after he and the other three defendants pleaded not guilty before the same judge. Vick and the others still are scheduled for trial Nov. 26.
Prosecutors claim Taylor, 34, found the Surry County property purchased by Vick and used it as the site of "Bad Newz Kennels," a dogfighting enterprise. The Hampton man also allegedly helped purchase pit bulls and killed at least two dogs that fared poorly in test fights.
Perhaps Taylor's impending plea will squelch the annoying Old Media comparisons of the Vick case to that of the innocent Duke lacrosse players wrongly indicted by Prosecutor Mike Nifong last year.
A week ago, in probably the most egregious example of Duke-Vick projection, Sports Illustrated writer Peter King appointed himself to be NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's translator:
The most telling 23 words regarding Michael Vick's immediate future as a football player came late in the NFL's statement about the alleged heinous, dastardly and despicable acts that led to charges being filed against the former savior of the Atlanta Falcons.
Michael Vick's guilt has not yet been proven, and we believe that all concerned should allow the legal process to determine the facts.
With that, rookie commissioner Roger Goodell sent a strong message: This is not going to be the Duke lacrosse case.
Does anyone besides Peter King and a few other race-obsessed reporters, opportunists, and attention-seekers think Roger Goodell had the Duke situation in mind when he made his statement?
Reacting to the Vick indictment on ESPN, Roger Cossack admonished "us" (he actually said "let's not") not to repeat the same mistakes as "we" did in the Duke case. If by "we," Cossack meant the New York Times, many other Old Media outlets, the Duke administration, and 88 horrid faculty members who signed an inflammatory letter -- all of whom in essence presumed guilt when the legal process had barely begun -- he has a small point. If he was telling reporters and others to lay low until there is a final verdict, he was really calling for inappropriate, unwarranted, and unprecedented self-censorship.
Turner's plea, if it indeed occurs on Monday, should break any hoped-for Vick-Duke parallels to bits. But I expect some will continue to play the tune, even though:
- No one in the Duke case copped a plea.
- Nifong, the now-disgraced Duke prosecutor, never had any objective evidence of substance (much of it was, to put it delicately, tainted); the Vick prosecutors have a mountain of physical evidence.
- The Duke indictment was an exercise in prosecutorial fanstasy; the Vick indictment's 18 pages laboriously recite alleged facts and events that will need to be refuted in their entirety.
- The Duke case had holes you could drive a Mack Truck through, and the only question was whether one of the students would break, not because of guilt, but to stop the accompanying hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees from piling up. The Vick indictment has a sounder foundation, and it's not unreasonable to predict that Michael Vick faces a difficult challenge trying to beat this rap.
All of which shows that there is no point in trying to draw parallels between the two situations. Other than the proceedings taking place in a courtroom, there are none.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
—Tom Blumer is president of a training and development company in Mason, Ohio, and is a contributing editor to NewsBusters
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The Sense of People with No Sense
Fri, 07/27/2007 - 23:45 ET by Lame Cherryit is one thing for stupid college kids to be Nifonged at Duke in having to spend millions to save their reputations and what is left of their lives in a case which will haunt them all of their lives.....but it is another thing for these stupid, Stupid, STUPID jocks who believe they are gods and no laws apply to them to not have someone with sense to tell them to "make it go away".
Everyone knows the NFL football owners are some of the richest and most powerful people in America. They are connected and sport's teams get away with raping communities from costing fortunes in police and court charges to games fixed....and Congress will not do a thing about it.
Michael Vick needs a slap upside his head and along with his lawyer to simply inform the prosecutors, "What do I have to do to make this go away".
If the prosecutors are an operative like Patrick Fitzgerald looking for blood, then you contact your NFL boss and get the wheels rolling "to make this go away".
Vick can stand in court and apologize, let PETA call him a dirty SOB, have a dog pee on his leg and pay a huge "fine" like donating a bundle to some prosecutor's charity.....but the point is this never should have got this far as the first thing you do whether you are guilty or not and a big shot is find out how to make things go away quickly.
Vick is not that bright, Pacman Jones is not that bright, Randy Moss was not that bright and that perpetual arrest subject Henry is not that bright and apparently the owners now are not that bright.
Jocks are jocks. Some have character like John Elway, some have major woman problems like Terry Bradshaw, some like Howie Long actually think they are intelligent.....but most are like Butkus in just showing up for a job and doing it well. The NFL has always had the Vick problem, but Al Davis and most owners either made things go away or settled the problem by hammering the problem.
Want to know why Daunte Culpepper is not in Minnesota? The owner and coach told Culpepper he was going to play football and sit his hind end at home instead "clubbing" all night. Culpepper like a spoiled brat believed former coach Dennis Green in thinking he was a more than a mortal....and now Culpepper is shopping for a team as no one wants the klutz.
I know these football players in the dregs like Vick. I know Culpepper rode around Minneapolis with his "possee" which was his agent and some flunkies instead of being home with his wife. That is why he played crapper football.
I know linemen who hire limo's and buses to bring parties to them.....and he parties amount to the lineman sitting on his couch with his crew and nothing happens, but the little people get a beer and get to look at an NFL star.
If this crap ever got out just like in baseball, hockey and basketball people would drop the whole works. They have too much money and not enough sense to actually WORK at football as a job. No these jocks sit around bored and get into trouble.
For the good of the NFL the NFL should have made this go away and then made Michael Vick go away. This country used to have people who knew how to solve things and now it is nothing but a majority of social and mental retards.
*HIC IACET ARTORIVS REX QVONDAM REXQVE FVTVRVS
For the good of the NFL
Sat, 07/28/2007 - 00:29 ET by clarkfkSeconded!
Very well put. The
Sat, 07/28/2007 - 00:34 ET by Gat New YorkVery well put. The comparisons to the Duke case breaks down also because the person who was supposed to be abused was a down-on-her-luck hooker who set this up and could defend herself. The victims in the Vick case are helpless dogs who in many cases are dead.
Presumption of innocence is...
Sat, 07/28/2007 - 00:25 ET by m4ster chief"Presumption of innocence" is a legal term; an essential element of our justice system that sets the bar over which a prosecutor must leap in order to gain a righteous conviction "beyond a reasonable doubt." It is a term and a concept used most appropriately when the defense attorney is conducting voir dire questioning of prospective jurors.
But we laymen have no obligation, either legal or moral, to presume innocence. We can make a judgement based upon things we see, hear, read, and deduce after processing everything in our minds...using common sense and logic as aids to our reasoning. And then we can change our minds if we like...three or four times if needed.
While the NFL is under no legal or moral obligation to suspend or terminate Mr. Vick based solely on the Grand Jury indictment, neither is it obligated to apply a legal standard of presumption of innocence to Mr. Vick.
I believe a good temporary fix for this problem would be a suspension with pay until Mr. Vick is either acquitted or convicted. The basis for the suspension would be the allegations in the indictment, as opposed to actual evidence that will be presented at trial. If Mr. Vick, between now and the trial date, begins negotiations that could lead to a plea bargain with a guilty plea, the NFL could rightly change the suspension to "without pay." If he is convicted, he could be fired immediately. Then the Atlanta Falcons could initiate a civil proceeding against Mr. Vick, asking for punitive damages for a breach of his employment contract, assuming there is a "morals" and/or "conduct" clause in Mr. Vick's contract with Atlanta, plus they ask for attorney's fees.
Or...whatever. I'm tired and I'm going to bed.
Vick ain't no Saint...
Sat, 07/28/2007 - 00:56 ET by pmohbuckhe went to school here in blacksburg ... the guy may have his day in court, and that's fine, but vick demonstrated his "supreme being" status while quarterbacking the hokies to national recognition. without getting specific, he had already cultivated an "above the law" attitude following his superb performance as a freshman.
when your dealing with college football, the media isn't always privy to the dirty little secrets that are covered up to prevent a meltdown, not just for the football team, but the entire town where the college sits.
i laugh at the sports journalists who deem themselves experts on everything athletic, especially with the vick case. if they really want a story on the guy's character, they need to stop looking at game highlights and start interviewing the students who shared the campus with him while he was at va. tech ... people would be surprised.
i also wouldn't be surprised if the indictment is the tip of the iceburg ... i believe there's more to come ... the feds have really sunk their teeth into this thing (no pun intended) for some reason and i wouldn't be shocked if it concerned more than the disgusting behavior noted in the indictment.
On the athlete-student
Sat, 07/28/2007 - 01:37 ET by UnsaneEVERY athlete-student, especially superstar athlete-students, are above the law.
I remember well when in high school how we were all scolded on how we needed to uphold the schools tattered reputation and all be good little boys and girls in the Senior class...and that as such, if any of us got caught in serious infractions of school rules, we would be permitted to participate in The Last School Play (otherwise known as graduation). Well, two senior football players were caught in class in possession of beer. You'd think breaking the law would be enough to keep them off the stage to protect my school's PR standing, right?
Nah. They "walked the stage."
The athlete-student's lot is to be 100% above the law at all times, thus what you had to say would not surprise me in the least if true!
Res tantum valet quantum vendi potest.
Got any URLs where we could start?
Sat, 07/28/2007 - 04:48 ET by sarcasmoGot any URLs where we could start?? I'd barely heard of Vick (only as a first round draft pick for Atlanta) before, and I therefore know nothing of his background. What did he get away with at VA Tech? (Sheesh, in between the pharmaceutical-industry-purchased codeword-secrecy the biased news media put on my "doctor?/drug?/dosage?" questions following the shootings and now this Vick-mystery, I'm starting to see VA Tech as a rather mysterious place!)
JMR
}}---> Vick
Sat, 07/28/2007 - 05:02 ET by Cool ArrowI'm still wondering why there hasn't been an uproar about Klansman Byrd denouncing an unconvicted private citizen on the floor of the Senate. We can badmouth Vick all we want. We don't hold public office. A Senator is a different story.
Couple this with the disgusting posters proclaiming (Neuter Mike Vick) the Liberals were flashing in front of the courthouse, and I see the Dems reverting back to their old pre 1968 days.
Guess Al Sharpton is OK with such talk when it suits him.
The news media at least
Sat, 07/28/2007 - 05:12 ET by sarcasmoThe news media at least occasionally mention Byrd's KKK history. They have yet to ask my "what drug?" or my "what doctor?" or my "what dosage" questions, ever. So part of this was an innocent question about Vick's alleged college past, but part of my intent was to rub the news media's collective(ist) noses in their pharmaceutical-industry-purchased corruption, which smells a lot like dog-crap. Again. I still wanna know if constant Viagra, or Cialis, or Levitra boner-commercials purchased that silence, so those barbs are likely to continue until/unless I finally get the which-boner-drug-bought-the-dead-silence truth.
As for the screamers out in front of that courthouse, I'm not a fan, either. But I have no idea what their politics are -- how did you manage to discern that they were all "liberals"? (Whatever that means anymore?)
JMR
}}---> sarc
Sat, 07/28/2007 - 05:16 ET by Cool ArrowHow are you and your vegan libertarians getting along these days?
Did I post Harry Reid's
Sat, 07/28/2007 - 05:25 ET by sarcasmoDid I post Harry Reid's thing here? Because his ChaosPark.com site is now dead, so I can't find it anymore. Anyway, Large-L Libertarians as a party are decimated, as you might expect, whether or not the news media has bothered to do their jobs & notice. They have a total of 10 candidates running, and the top guy is named Steve Kubby, a medical pot patient they've spent millions of our tax dollars trying to fight, without success, both in court and as a "fugitive" (more lying by the government) in Canada. Steve has endorsed Dr. Ron Paul. But my intent in this thread was to give continual barbs about the silence the boner drug commercials purchased, and I'm determined to keep making that media-bias point, because it's one of my finer singlehanded-busts, if I do say so myself, and the deafening-silence is STILL going on....
JMR
]]---> Run this guy sarc
Sat, 07/28/2007 - 05:35 ET by Cool ArrowRun Penn Jillette and you've got a chance maybe
Penn & Teller's
Sat, 07/28/2007 - 05:47 ET by Jack BauerPenn & Teller's Bulls**t...
One of the best non-fiction shows on the box.
}}---> Not so fast there King
Sat, 07/28/2007 - 09:51 ET by Cool ArrowKing said the following in his SI article:
The NFL is not going to preemptively strike against a player with a relatively clean slate, as Vick has.
Well, Vick will be happy to know that two days ago when he was disinvited to Camp. Sorry, did I change tense in midsentence?
I find this whole Vick
Sat, 07/28/2007 - 09:22 ET by EvokeI find this whole Vick thing so uninteresting. I love my pooch, but I find this whole uproar over how these clowns treat there property to be a little much. The guy plays ball for a living, I really just don't care.
By "property", you're
Sat, 07/28/2007 - 18:11 ET by fitzfongBy "property", you're referring to the dogs?
That's comforting.
Yes, dogs are property.
Sun, 07/29/2007 - 16:01 ET by EvokeYes, dogs are property.
Then consider Vick's
Mon, 08/27/2007 - 00:32 ET by fitzfongThen consider Vick's punishment to be an extension of Eminent Domain, scumbag.