Their main job is to make sure the public never sees

Their main job is to make sure the public never sees

Beitragvon zhangzk » Sa 29. Jun 2019, 03:22

WEST PALM BEACH http://www.arizonacardinalsteamonline.com/byron-murphy-jersey , Fla. (AP) — New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s high-profile attorneys normally don’t handle second-degree misdemeanors like soliciting a prostitute, but that’s only part of what he needs them to do. On Friday, they will try to persuade Judge Leonard Hanser that police violated the 77-year-old’s federal and state rights when they secretly installed video cameras at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa. They want the videos thrown out and sealed.“Law enforcement had no basis to suspect anything more than a run-of-the-mill misdemeanor that has never been understood, in any corner of the United States, to warrant the eye-popping invasions that occurred here,” attorney Jack Goldberger wrote in court documents. “Because we do not live in a police state and our government answers to the rule of law, suppression of the illegally-obtained evidence is the correct and essential remedy.”In addition to Goldberger, who also represents billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Kraft also has William Burck, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who represented former White House Counsel Don McGahn during the Mueller investigation; and New York-based Alex Spiro, who has represented high-profile athletes and celebrities, including Jay-Z, Mick Jagger and former Patriot Aaron Hernandez, who was convicted of murder and later killed himself in prison.Palm Beach County prosecutors have replied in court documents that Kraft had no reasonable expectation of privacy at the spa in part because it was not his home or property, and that the felony case of prostitution against spa owners includes enough grounds to obtain warrants for search and surveillance of the spa.David S. Weinstein, a Miami defense attorney and former prosecutor not connected to the case, said Kraft’s attorneys are “raising the appropriate arguments,” but prosecutors will have a chance to rebut them in court. He said prosecutors will be able to raise the “good faith” exception to save the video — that officers had legitimate reasons to believe the warrant and their actions were legal.He also said Hanser will rely on what the officers and the judge who issued the search warrant believed in January about the possibility of human trafficking, not what is known now.Prosecutors say Kraft, whose estimated worth is $6 billion, twice visited Orchids of Asia in January, hours before flying to Kansas City to see his Patriots defeat the Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game. Two weeks later, they won the Super Bowl, their sixth under his ownership.Kraft and 25 other men were charged in February with paying for sex acts. Some have accepted plea deals. Those who haven’t would benefit if Kraft succeeds in getting his videos thrown out, as their attorneys could cite the ruling. Prosecutors originally said the spa might be involved in human trafficking, but have retracted that.Kraft has pleaded not guilty, but released a statement apologizing to Patriots fans and others for his actions. He is not expected to be in court.Kraft’s attorneys are attacking the warrant on several grounds:— That both the U.S. and Florida constitutions allow the secret installation of hidden cameras only under extraordinary circumstances and that Florida law specifically says secret audio recordings can only be made for serious crimes such as murder and kidnapping, not prostitution. They argue the threshold for video recordings would be even higher.— That Jupiter police conducted an illegal search without a warrant when they enlisted a state health inspector to visit the spa and report back what she saw inside. They used her report to help get the warrant allowing the cameras’ installation. Weinstein said prosecutors will get an opportunity to show this wasn’t subterfuge.— That detectives misled the judge who authorized the cameras’ installation by saying the health inspector had found evidence of human trafficking, but supplied no evidence such as photos of clothing or beds or other evidence that women were forced to stay there. They say detectives also failed to establish why more typical investigative methods such as sending in an undercover officer to see if he was offered sex for money wouldn’t have sufficed. Weinstein said the latter is “perhaps their weakest argument.” He said some of those techniques had been used and others would have failed to identify all the conspiracy’s participants or to gather the evidence needed.— That the cameras weren’t necessary, as detectives already had ample evidence of prostitution at the spa before they were installed Andy Isabella Jersey , including towels pulled from the trash and confessions of customers who had been stopped after leaving.— That the police and prosecutors’ initial suggestions that Orchids of Asia may have been part of a human trafficking ring were an effort to “spin a yarn about how their investigation had supposedly targeted high-level human trafficking rather than low-level prostitution.”Weinstein said whoever loses is certain to appeal Hanser’s ruling to higher courts. After all the points were piled up in the second-highest scoring season in NFL history, the popular prototype for a head coach became predictably clear.Teams on the annual coaching carousel this winter searched for their own version of prodigy Sean McVay, the creative play caller and quarterback whisperer who took the Los Angeles Rams to the Super Bowl in his second season at the helm.An Associated Press study of coaching staffs for the 2018 season found only four minorities in the stepping-stone positions of offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, just 7.1 percent of 56 jobs. That lack of minority coaches in the pipeline helped contribute to the NFL’s sharpest-ever one-year drop in minority head coaches, causing concern among advocates for diversity, who declared there has been unsatisfactory progress 16 years after the Rooney Rule was implemented.The rule named after late Pittsburgh owner Dan Rooney was put in place before the 2003 hiring season and now requires all teams to interview at least one minority candidate for any head coach or general manager vacancy. But the AP study found that nearly three-quarters of all minority assistants were either running backs, receivers, defensive backs coaches, or in lower-level positions like quality control coaches — jobs that historically have not directly led to head coaching opportunities.So when five black head coaches were fired this past season — Todd Bowles (Jets), Hue Jackson (Cleveland), Vance Joseph (Denver), Marvin Lewis (Cincinnati) and Steve Wilks (Arizona) — only one of the eight overall openings went to a minority with New England defensive assistant Brian Flores set to be hired by Miami after the Super Bowl.Thus, the ranks of minority head coaches in a league whose players are nearly 70 percent black has been reduced from eight to four in just one year. Not since the first year of the Rooney Rule will a season begin with fewer minority head coaches in the NFL: Flores, Anthony Lynn (Chargers), Ron Rivera (Carolina) and Mike Tomlin (Pittsburgh).To be fair, none of the firing or hiring decisions made this offseason was viewed in a vacuum as unjust. Since the start of the 2016 season, Bowles, Jackson, Joseph, Lewis and Wilks combined for a record of 50-132-2, a woeful winning percentage of .277. Collectively, however, this development has prompted diversity advocates to call on the NFL to consider changes that could help ensure this is a blip rather than a trend.“Dan’s proposal was to slow things down and see what coaches you want and try to come up with a minority candidate or candidates that fit that criteria, and people are not doing that now,” said Hall of Fame member Tony Dungy, who was one of two minority head coaches in the NFL when the Rooney Rule was enacted in December 2002.The success of McVay, who was hired at age 30 by the Los Angeles Rams and turned a four-win team into a Super Bowl participant in just two seasons, might have accidentally had some effect.McVay’s 35-year-old quarterbacks coach Zac Taylor is expected be the next head coach in Cincinnati despite only five games of experience as an interim offensive coordinator in the NFL.Matt LaFleur, 39, replaced Mike McCarthy as head coach in Green Bay with just two years of offensive coordinator experience on his resume. Kliff Kingsbury got the top job in Arizona shortly after being fired as a college head coach at Texas Tech.“I think it is cyclical,” Dungy said. “I also think a lot of owners don’t know or understand what goes into being a successful head coach. If I coach my quarterback really well I will have a good team, of course Clelin Ferrell Jersey , and they feel the guy who coaches the quarterback really will be a successful head coach, but we have seen that’s not necessarily the case. For every Doug Pederson or Sean McVay, who are great, we see (many) who don’t work out.”The hunt for the next McVay is similar to what happened starting more than a decade ago when coaches with ties to Dungy and his Tampa 2 defensive system were the hot commodities. Four of Dungy’s former defensive assistants — all minorities — went on to get head coaching jobs: Tomlin, Herm Edwards, Lovie Smith and Leslie Frazier.Raheem Morris also got a head coaching job after joining the staff with Tampa Bay after Dungy was fired, and Dungy’s former offensive coordinator in Indianapolis, Jim Caldwell, got head coaching opportunities with the Colts and Detroit Lions.After a season in which the four conference finalists were the four highest-scoring teams in the league, the emphasis is firmly on offense.“Ratings are up. Points scored are higher. People love offense. The rules have gone to offense. So there’s a bias toward offensive head coaches right now,” Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper said, while praising the NFL’s efforts to enhance ground-level opportunity and aim for more minorities in the paths that typically lead to head coach positions.Of the 19 minority head coaches in the league since 2002, 14 had primarily defensive backgrounds including Bowles, Joseph, Lewis and Wilks. In 2015, 17 of the 32 head coaches in the NFL came from defensive backgrounds. This year, 20 of 32 will be offense-minded. In 2015, six of the seven new hires had defensive backgrounds. In the four offseasons since then, 21 of the 28 head coaches hired came from offensive backgrounds.“For whatever reason, the opportunity for minority coaches seems to be stronger on the defensive side of the ball and the coaches that have advanced to become head coaches from the minority perspective, most of them have come from the defensive side,” said Steelers president Art Rooney II, son of Dan Rooney. “It’s something we need to look at: ‘How do we improve the opportunities on the offensive side for minority coaches?'”There were 11 minority defensive coordinators in the league in 2018, along with Flores, who has called signals this season for New England but was listed officially as the linebackers coach. But only one offensive coordinator (Eric Bieniemy of Kansas City) was a minority. Tampa Bay recently doubled that total by hiring Byron Leftwich, who started 2018 as one of only three minority quarterbacks coaches in the league before also becoming interim offensive coordinator in Arizona.Of the 20 offensive head coaches in the league, 16 served as offensive coordinators before getting hired and 17 spent time as quarterbacks coaches or played the position in college or the pros. That is a path that only a handful of minorities are on.“I think teams are looking too much at the play callers versus a guy that can be the CEO of an organization, a face of the organization, a guy that can lead a football team and get the most out of his players,” said Lynn, who spent 14 seasons as a running backs coach before serving as an interim offensive coordinator for Buffalo the year before getting hired by the Chargers. “That has nothing to do with play calling. That has everything to do with a man’s character and leadership and guys willing to follow him. You have some excellent play callers that we’ve proven over and over again that can’t be a head coach in this league. We’ve proven that. It’s just a change of thinking in the hiring process.”An AP review of all of the coaching staffs in the league at the start of the 2018 season, excluding administrative assistants Josh Oliver Jersey , data analysts and strength and conditioning coaches for the purpose of streamlining the count, found that 34.8 percent of the coaches were minorities, 216 of 621.Breaking out primary position coaches of running backs, wide receivers and defensive backs, the number of minorities in 2018 was 69.6 percent, 71 of 102. But Lynn is one of the rare head coaches whose career path was primarily as a running backs coach. Cleveland’s Freddie Kitchens, who is white, is the only other current head coach in the league whose primary stepping-stone job was as a running backs coach.“If you’re really, really committed to giving minorities opportunities, then you must build a pipeline. To build a pipeline you need to bring in minority coaches at the quarterbacks and quality control spots,” said John Wooten, executive director of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, an organization that works to foster racial diversity in the NFL. “There are so few quarterback coaches and coordinators at the college level. Consequently, because of that lack, you don’t have the area to build from, so you have to go build it yourself. That’s what plans we have, to do it that way.”Wooten plans to meet with NFL officials at the upcoming scouting combine to discuss getting teams to commit to hiring more minorities for entry-level jobs that can eventually lead to coordinator or head coaching opportunities.The league announced in December what it said were stronger provisions for the Rooney Rule . Among several changes, clubs now must interview at least one candidate of diversity from a list compiled by an advisory panel, or a candidate not currently employed by the team. The league is also requiring teams to keep records and provide them when asked by the commissioner.“We believe more can be done to support the Rooney Rule in the interest of creating an inclusive opportunity platform with the intent that consideration, inclusion and consistency will become rooted in hiring practices,” NFL football operations chief Troy Vincent said.Wooten and others, however, stopped short of endorsing an explicit extension of the Rooney Rule to coordinator jobs, preferring to maintain an atmosphere of autonomy for head coaches in selecting their staffs.For Lynn, too, there’s perspective about the tenuous nature of the profession amid the push for more opportunity.“I just think it’s one of those years. Some guys got let go. It happens every year. I like to look at it as just coaches. I don’t like to look at it as black and white coaches,” Lynn said last week at the Pro Bowl. “I think we’ve got to get some good minority coaches coming up through the pipes, and I think there are some really good ones. They need some more opportunities.”
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