Kraft One-Ups Brady’s Departure

joe dokes

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Really like to hear Rovin Romine's take on how common this type of offer is---as I read the article it is not quite nolo or Alford. What would be the reason for prosecution to offer this specific deal at this point?

I, too await, RR's take. My guess it that given the usual minimal sentences for these types of crimes, the prosecution has to give him something or else he has no incentive. "You don't have to plead guilty" is something.
I realy want RR's take on whether, as the WSJ breathlessly asserts, its really an "unusual" provision.
 

E5 Yaz

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"You don't have to plead guilty" is something..
I think it's nothing. What it appears they are offering is the lack of charges in exchange for agreeing to the punishment you'd get if found guilty.

All it does is cost the state of Florida less financially by avoiding multiple court proceedings.

The only thing Kraft "gets" is that they don't make the evidence public ... and in today's society, it will get out eventually anyway.
 

PedroKsBambino

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I, too await, RR's take. My guess it that given the usual minimal sentences for these types of crimes, the prosecution has to give him something or else he has no incentive. "You don't have to plead guilty" is something.
I realy want RR's take on whether, as the WSJ breathlessly asserts, its really an "unusual" provision.
I guess it depends on the evidence---that's 'something' if he is clearly guilty, but if there's much of any ambiguity about things it is more a benefit for the prosecution seems to me.
 

DennyDoyle'sBoil

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What would be the reason for prosecution to offer this specific deal at this point?
Maybe it's a response to the public denial? We'll give you a plea and you won't have a criminal record but we're not going to let your denial in the press hang out there as though the charge was unfounded.

Another possibility is that it's a way to avoid civil liability. It would make it hard for him to sue the department.
 

PedroKsBambino

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Maybe it's a response to the public denial? We'll give you a plea and you won't have a criminal record but we're not going to let your denial in the press hang out there as though the charge was unfounded.

Another possibility is that it's a way to avoid civil liability. It would make it hard for him to sue the department.
Yes, the civil liability point occurred to me too---though, generally it's really hard to sue when a grand jury has indicted (come to think of it---was that even needed here?) I can imagine Kraft's lawyers (who I imagine have been told money is no object, nor are sanction fines, in the pursuit of winning the PR battle here) coming up with all sorts of theories to get around that, though, too. So I guess it has to be a risk the prosecutors have in their heads.
 

Bread of Yaz

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Really like to hear Rovin Romine's take on how common this type of offer is---as I read the article it is not quite nolo or Alford. What would be the reason for prosecution to offer this specific deal at this point?

It gives the defendant a hand in how his case turns out.
 

joe dokes

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I think it's nothing. What it appears they are offering is the lack of charges in exchange for agreeing to the punishment you'd get if found guilty.

All it does is cost the state of Florida less financially by avoiding multiple court proceedings.

The only thing Kraft "gets" is that they don't make the evidence public ... and in today's society, it will get out eventually anyway.
That might depend on whether it counts as a "conviction" for other purposes. For me, that would be a big consideration. I don't know about KraftyBob's take.
 

soxhop411

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Just got this push from ESPN

Advocates call on Goodell to ban Kraft if guilty

Advocates against sex trafficking are urging NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to "banish" New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft from the league if he is found guilty of soliciting sex at a Florida spa.

The request was made in a letter dated Tuesday sent to Goodell at the NFL's New York offices that was signed by 19 survivors of sexual abuse and 60 organizations that fight sexual exploitation
"It's important for the NFL to recognize that those who buy people for sex engage in crimes of sexual coercion and violence," Lisa L. Thompson, vice president of policy and research at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation said in a statement. "Payment for sex is a raw manifestation of sexual coercion. Men who buy people for sex use money to gain power and exercise temporary sexual control over others -- typically women and girls. Further, we know that if men stopped purchasing people for sex, there would be no sex trafficking."

"For a team owner to engage in sexual exploitation is incompatible with the NFL's personal conduct policy. Accordingly, survivors of sexual exploitation and trafficking, along with other advocates for the eradication of sexual exploitation call on the NFL to hold Robert Kraft accountable by banning him from NFL team ownership."
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/26309158/advocates-call-goodell-ban-kraft-guilty
 

Rovin Romine

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Sounds like BS condition of entering the diversion program. If you have to admit guilt then you flunk out of the program, can they use that admission on the reinstated prosecution of the charge? Been a while for me in that game, so I'm curious to hear what RR has to say as well. Back in the day, diversion programs (small scale stuff) was a money/fine grab by the city/county/etc.
The whole point of a diversion program is you do X, and the state drops the charges, as though they declined to prosecute. These programs are fairly common but vary somewhat between FL jurisdictions.

However, in all of them, you plea NG, then enter the diversion program, waiving speedy trial rights. If you screw up in the program, you're back to square one.

I'd have to see the language of the actual agreement, but I suspect it's a WPB thing. I'd suspect the "could have proven" language might be included for collateral consequences, like immigration issues, or civil liability. And as such it would be *highly* undesirable to have in any such agreement. Whether or not the state could use it against you in a subsequent criminal trial is something else, and a bit more tangled.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Here's the latest on the criminal charges that are related to this incident, not including the several hundred counts of solicitation filed by various jurisdictions: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/florida/fl-bz-human-trafficking-20190315-story.html
  • Martin County: holding two women on charges of operating the illicit spas. Sheriff William Snyder said federal officials brought in 13 Mandarin-speaking interpreters to speak with women working at the illicit spas. His agency will “treat them as victims,” with some of them possibly cooperating with authorities. Snyder said his agency tracked $20 million “going in and out of China,” but didn’t go into specifics on how the criminal ring’s finances worked. Snyder said many more arrests are expected.
  • Jupiter police arrested two women on charges they ran the Orchids of Asia Day Spa.
  • Vero Beach police charged five people with running the business. They still were hunting for three more people connected to running Florida businesses. One of the detained women reportedly had $22,000 in her purse. Police partnered with a crime task force in Central Florida, which led to two women facing charges of racketeering in Orange County.
More charges are expected according to law enforcement officials.
 

InstaFace

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That's a pretty ridiculous overstatement by this "National Center on Sexual Exploitation". Sex-for-hire is not de-facto human trafficking. I think it's pretty clear that the providers here signed up for exactly what they got, weighed it against their other options to earn income, and are free to leave at any point. Argue the morals of it if you like, but the constant conflation of consenting-adults paid sex acts, with human trafficking, hurts the cause by blowing their target up out of all proportion to the actual underlying problems. Focusing on 30- and 40-something chinese ladies who go through a competitive application process to come here and give handjobs for what would be considered excellent money back home is really just diverting resources and attention away from the truly exploited - the proper word is probably "enslaved" - people who are not free and not consenting.

"Payment for sex is a raw manifestation of sexual coercion. Men who buy people for sex use money to gain power and exercise temporary sexual control over others -- typically women and girls. Further, we know that if men stopped purchasing people for sex, there would be no sex trafficking."
This just says that money is power, and people with money can get other people to do things for that money. Um, yeah - that's why we use money as a medium of exchange. These people then take that money and do things with it that work out great for them, like buy food and clothes and shelter and their own entertainment.

"Payment for housecleaning is a raw manifestation of domestic coercion. Men who buy peoples' time to clean their house use money to gain power and exercise temporary delegation of cleaning duties over others - typically women. Further, we know that if men stopped purchasing people's time for housecleaning, there would be nobody who immigrated to this country and then made a living doing it."

Like, give me a break. Is someone paying someone else for sex icky? that's fine. Argue the ick. But don't piss on me and tell me it's raining. I usually make people pay extra for that service.
 

SumnerH

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That's a pretty ridiculous overstatement by this "National Center on Sexual Exploitation".
As mentioned above, they're the group formerly known as Morality in Media; they're a religious group that wants to ban all even vaguely adult content—they've gone after educational providers of periodical searches because they indexed articles in Men's Health that discuss sexual health, and campaigning against Cosmopolitan magazine is high on their agenda.

Their “Dirty Dozen” target list of major contributors to sexual exploitation includes Amazon, Google, United Airlines, HBO, Netflix, and the American Library Association. Their watch list of other dangerous groups includes the US Department of Justice.
 

InstaFace

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Well it was posted here as if it were relevant to the national conversation, rather than the ravings of a marginal group with no following, so I treated it as such. SoxHop (yet again) posted content without taking a position on it or giving any sort of context for what he thought it affected or why it was important, so I guess I read intention into it. If that's my bad, so be it, but I stand by my position.
 

soxhop411

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Espn thought it was important enough for them to send an alert and talk about it on tv earlier today.


Regardless the “deal” being offered is a non starter for Kraft according to WEEI. Kraft expects “intense” negotiations to start in the coming weeks. So we should see where this ends up and what punishment Kraft gets fairly soon.

On Tuesday, there was word Florida prosecutors have offered a deal to Robert Kraft and others to have their soliciting prostitution charges dropped. This would happen if the men were to admit they would be found guilty at a trial.

But, it doesn't look like Kraft will go for it.

According to ESPN's T.J. Quinn, this is a "non-starter" for him and to expect intense negotiations over the next week in advance of his March 28 scheduled court date.
Quinn also notes Kraft had two goals: getting as much distance as possible from any trafficking allegations, and keeping the video evidence sealed. There appears to be no evidence of trafficking, and with the right diversion agreements the evidence would be sealed.
https://weei.radio.com/blogs/ryan-hannable/robert-kraft-update-latest-deal-florida-prosecutors-reportedly-non-starter
 

Ed Hillel

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Kraft will admit that the Miami Miracle was a “really cool play” in exchange for the prosecution dropping all charges.
 

djbayko

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Espn thought it was important enough for them to send an alert and talk about it on tv earlier today.


Regardless the “deal” being offered is a non starter for Kraft according to WEEI. Kraft expects “intense” negotiations to start in the coming weeks. So we should see where this ends up and what punishment Kraft gets fairly soon.




https://weei.radio.com/blogs/ryan-hannable/robert-kraft-update-latest-deal-florida-prosecutors-reportedly-non-starter
Not surprising. If it were something that was acceptable to Kraft, we wouldn't be hearing about an offer, we'd be hearing about a deal being reached. Someone is using the media.
 

reggiecleveland

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As mentioned above, they're the group formerly known as Morality in Media; they're a religious group that wants to ban all even vaguely adult content—they've gone after educational providers of periodical searches because they indexed articles in Men's Health that discuss sexual health, and campaigning against Cosmopolitan magazine is high on their agenda.

Their “Dirty Dozen” target list of major contributors to sexual exploitation includes Amazon, Google, United Airlines, HBO, Netflix, and the American Library Association. Their watch list of other dangerous groups includes the US Department of Justice.
I miss when born again nuts like the Falwell's went after boobs on tv instead of promoting religious murders.
 

DJnVa

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Espn thought it was important enough for them to send an alert and talk about it on tv earlier today.
Yeah, but ESPN sucks.

I do agree with InstaFace that posting straight links with no accompanying context isn't something we want to do all the time. I don't care what ESPN thinks--we're here because we care (kinda) what other members think.
 

LoweTek

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Well it was posted here as if it were relevant to the national conversation, rather than the ravings of a marginal group with no following, so I treated it as such. SoxHop (yet again) posted content without taking a position on it or giving any sort of context for what he thought it affected or why it was important, so I guess I read intention into it. If that's my bad, so be it, but I stand by my position.
I agree with what you said 100% and think it needed to be said with or without the context of the original post you quoted. It is true of many groups out there. Florida just termed out the State AG who completely conflated trafficking and consensual paid sex as though they were synonymous 100% of the time. It's a press/media hot button, simple as that. It's a very common exaggeration amongst politically motivated AGs, DAs, Sheriffs, Police Chiefs, etc. They love to be on TV spouting on about crimes everyone abhors but rarely actually happen.

It's pretty clear Kraft's attorney believes they can either get a better deal with charges dropped or he can beat it.

I'm betting if he tries to beat it it will be by going after the validity of the video surveillance evidence and the warrant for it. I doubt it ever comes to trial though. Courts hate wasting time with misdemeanor first time offenders who have unlimited resources to defend themselves.

I doubt this DA wants to get in the ring with a Kraft level defense attorney. Very risky. If Kraft were to be cleared at trial a whole bunch of law enforcement types look really bad, not that they don't already.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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I think it's pretty clear that the providers here signed up for exactly what they got, weighed it against their other options to earn income, and are free to leave at any point. Argue the morals of it if you like, but the constant conflation of consenting-adults paid sex acts, with human trafficking, hurts the cause by blowing their target up out of all proportion to the actual underlying problems. Focusing on 30- and 40-something chinese ladies who go through a competitive application process to come here and give handjobs for what would be considered excellent money back home is really just diverting resources and attention away from the truly exploited - the proper word is probably "enslaved" - people who are not free and not consenting.
Wait a minute. I haven't read this thread closely, but do you have any support for the "free to leave at any point" and "competitive application process"?

Maybe you are referring to the workers at the Orchids of Asia - who to my knowledge have not been implicated in the human trafficking component - but certainly the majority of these workers are not "free to leave".

Here's an article on the human trafficking component in these Asian massage parlors: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/us/massage-parlors-human-trafficking.html. And it's not just massage parlors. There have been stories of restaurants that essentially do the same thing: find workers from China; hold their passports; charge them exorbitant rates for things like places to stay, transportation, work clothes, etc., and basically make them indentured servants. And the workers are often rotated from place to place to ensure their cooperation.
 

InstaFace

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There have been links posted in this thread, I'm not going back over 23 pages to find them. There is no "human trafficking component" here, not with this chain of establishments. It was initially reported, probably as LoweTek says, as a scare tactic... and then they quietly backed off of that claim once it was clearly not the case in this chain. I'm sure it happens, but far more rarely than law enforcement would like us all to believe.
 

Shelterdog

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There have been links posted in this thread, I'm not going back over 23 pages to find them. There is no "human trafficking component" here, not with this chain of establishments. It was initially reported, probably as LoweTek says, as a scare tactic... and then they quietly backed off of that claim once it was clearly not the case in this chain. I'm sure it happens, but far more rarely than law enforcement would like us all to believe.
You simply don't know that. The fact that it hasn't been charged doesn't mean that there isn't trafficking. And those links that support you that you aren't bothering to find--they don't exist.
 

snowmanny

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You simply don't know that. The fact that it hasn't been charged doesn't mean that there isn't trafficking. And those links that support you that you aren't bothering to find--they don't exist.
There were at least links that the specific people involved specifically with Kraft did not appear to be victims of human trafficking. I can't recall if there was a broader article regarding the chain or the Jupiter establishment.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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There have been links posted in this thread, I'm not going back over 23 pages to find them. There is no "human trafficking component" here, not with this chain of establishments. It was initially reported, probably as LoweTek says, as a scare tactic... and then they quietly backed off of that claim once it was clearly not the case in this chain. I'm sure it happens, but far more rarely than law enforcement would like us all to believe.
Just up from your post was my post outlining the non-solicitation charges that have been filed. There are certainly some human trafficking charges that are being investigated. I've copied the post below.

There is certainly a "human trafficking" component in the investigation. It is unclear whether Orchids of Asia is involved in the human trafficking but to conclude that there is "no 'human trafficking component' here, not with this chain of establishments" is certainly premature and from all reports overbroad.

Not even mentioning the fact that human trafficking and Asian massage parlors is a fairly big issue around the country.

Here's the latest on the criminal charges that are related to this incident, not including the several hundred counts of solicitation filed by various jurisdictions: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/florida/fl-bz-human-trafficking-20190315-story.html
  • Martin County: holding two women on charges of operating the illicit spas. Sheriff William Snyder said federal officials brought in 13 Mandarin-speaking interpreters to speak with women working at the illicit spas. His agency will “treat them as victims,” with some of them possibly cooperating with authorities. Snyder said his agency tracked $20 million “going in and out of China,” but didn’t go into specifics on how the criminal ring’s finances worked. Snyder said many more arrests are expected.
  • Jupiter police arrested two women on charges they ran the Orchids of Asia Day Spa.
  • Vero Beach police charged five people with running the business. They still were hunting for three more people connected to running Florida businesses. One of the detained women reportedly had $22,000 in her purse. Police partnered with a crime task force in Central Florida, which led to two women facing charges of racketeering in Orange County.
More charges are expected according to law enforcement officials.
 
Jul 18, 2005
29
Just up from your post was my post outlining the non-solicitation charges that have been filed. There are certainly some human trafficking charges that are being investigated. I've copied the post below.

There is certainly a "human trafficking" component in the investigation. It is unclear whether Orchids of Asia is involved in the human trafficking but to conclude that there is "no 'human trafficking component' here, not with this chain of establishments" is certainly premature and from all reports overbroad.

Not even mentioning the fact that human trafficking and Asian massage parlors is a fairly big issue around the country.
I really don't get this approach. If preventing human trafficking is an important cause for you, you should be cheering legitimate efforts to tackle it but also denouncing efforts that cynically use it as a label for other purposes. Based only on information from police and prosecutors, this really smells like the latter.

This thread is about Kraft's involvement in a scandal. Everything released so far by the _prosecution_ has indicated that there was no trafficking at this particular parlor and that the two professionals involved in Kraft's acts are able to go where they want (1 proprietor, 1 with a prior driver license in NY, neither young).

They have lumped it in with an investigation halfway across Florida where there are accusations of trafficking, but they don't establish any other connection. Their releases also seem callous to the supposed victims of this conspiracy. They've got plenty of soggy napkins and videos but mention workers that relocated/disappeared during their investigation with no described attempts to find them. Even the ones they have, they describe as suspects and cooperating witnesses, where I would expect phrases like "protective custody" and "asylum" to go with a genuine attempt to battle human trafficking.

We haven't heard everything, but what we have heard seems to call for cynicism.
 

Shelterdog

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There were at least links that the specific people involved specifically with Kraft did not appear to be victims of human trafficking. I can't recall if there was a broader article regarding the chain or the Jupiter establishment.
If he'd said that I wouldn't have disagreed. But he made a much broader claim.