Thanks to a pretrial intervention program, it looks like Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice will avoid being prosecuted for an alleged assault of his now-wife.
According to Lynda Cohen of The Press of Atlantic City, the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office approved Rice’s acceptance into pretrial intervention on Monday. Upon successful completion of the program, Rice’s third-degree charge of aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury would be dismissed, however, the arrest would remain on his record even though he was never convicted.
In early February, Rice and his then-fiancée, Janay Palmer, were both originally charged with simple assault stemming from an incident that took place inside a casino elevator. Shortly after their arrests, the website TMZ posted video from outside the elevator that clearly showed Rice moving an unconscious Palmer around.
According to reports, video shot from inside elevator also exists, but it has yet to be made public and was slated to be used as evidence against Rice.
It looks as though Rice will get off easy here, outside of having his reputation damaged. Now that this part of the process appears to be over, we’ll have to wait and see what NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has in store for Rice as far as a punishment goes.
One would think that Rice would at least get a two game suspension even though the conviction will be dropped. The Ravens will open the 2014 season against the Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers, so a two game suspension would result in the Rutgers product missing two very important divisional games.
Stay tuned.
