NFLPA: Saints Employees Fear Retribution for ‘bounty’ Testimony at BetLM

NFLPA: Saints Employees Fear Retribution for ‘bounty’ Testimony

NEW ORLEANS (NFL/Wyche) — As lawyers for the four sus­pended New Orleans Saints play­ers await evi­dence from the NFL on Fri­day that will — at the least — out­line the league’s posi­tion head­ing into Monday’s appeals hear­ings, the NFL Play­ers Asso­ci­a­tion sent a let­ter to the league Thurs­day claim­ing cur­rent, for­mer or sus­pended Saints employ­ees fear “ret­ri­bu­tion” from the NFL if they pro­vide truth­ful tes­ti­mony into the “bounty” scandal.

Those wit­nesses’ fears could be alle­vi­ated should the NFL com­pel them to attend the appeal hear­ings and tes­tify, accord­ing to a let­ter sent from the NFLPA’s legal coun­sel to NFL Com­mis­sioner Roger Good­ell, who will hear the player appeals.

On Fri­day, the NFL declined to com­ment on the NFLPA’s requests and its claim wit­nesses feared retribution.

In a June 11 let­ter to Good­ell, the NFLPA requested that Saints coach Sean Pay­ton, gen­eral man­ager Mickey Loomis, assis­tant head coach Joe Vitt, for­mer defen­sive coor­di­na­tor Gregg Williams (all have been sus­pended for var­i­ous roles in the “bounty” pro­gram) appear and tes­tify at the appeals hear­ing. Four oth­ers, includ­ing two mem­bers of NFL secu­rity, Joe Hum­mel and Jeff Miller, were also requested to attend and testify.

Most, if not all, of those requested by the NFLPA have already spo­ken with Good­ell dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion that charges the Saints with run­ning a “bounty” pro­gram from 2009 to 2011 in which play­ers pledged money to oth­ers to injure oppo­nents. League secu­rity tried to arrange inter­views with play­ers before dis­ci­pline was handed down, but all refused.

Saints line­backer Jonathan Vilma (2012 sea­son), defen­sive end Will Smith (four games), and for­mer Saints line­backer Scott Fujita (three games) and defen­sive end Anthony Har­grove (eight games) have all been sus­pended. They will appeal their cases to Good­ell. They have lost two griev­ance hear­ings chal­leng­ing Goodell’s juris­dic­tion to rule on the bounty pro­gram. One of those rul­ings has been appealed.

A source involved with the play­ers side said that even after Monday’s appeal, the legal maneu­ver­ing prob­a­bly isn’t over, mean­ing more suits could be filed in courts.

It’s not yet clear if the NFL can com­pel or will even try to have those requested wit­nesses at Monday’s appeal. The NFL is bound to pro­vide play­ers Fri­day with the plan it intends to employ at the appeals hearing.

It is not required to turn over all of its evi­dence, which the NFLPA asked for in its let­ter to the NFL on Thurs­day. Part of that evi­dence the NFLPA requested was a writ­ten dec­la­ra­tion from Duke Naiphon, who the NFLPA said spoke to the NFL dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion and pro­vided evi­dence from sev­eral team and defen­sive meet­ings dur­ing the 2010 sea­son. Mul­ti­ple league sources have acknowl­edged the exis­tence of finan­cial doc­u­men­ta­tion of pledges into a “bounty” program.

Play­ers have denied being involved in a “bounty” pro­gram and have argued that the league has pro­vided no evi­dence link­ing them to a pay-for-performance pro­gram in which they inten­tion­ally tried to injure oppos­ing play­ers. The NFL said it has sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence link­ing the play­ers to the pro­gram and ini­tially said 22 to 27 play­ers were involved but nar­rowed those being pun­ished to Vilma, Smith, Har­grove and Fujita because of their sup­posed lead­er­ship roles in the program.

Our sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more NFL news see: NFLPA: Saints employ­ees fear ret­ri­bu­tion for ‘bounty’ tes­ti­mony.

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Related Posts:

• NFLPA Hires Out­side Coun­sel for Play­ers in Saints’ ‘bounty’ Case
• Saints ‘bounty’ Dis­ci­pline Won’t Change, Com­mis­sioner Says
• Appeals in Saints ‘bounty’ Case to Be Heard Thurs­day by Goodell
• Appeal Hear­ings in Saints ‘bounty’ Case Yet to Be Scheduled
• NFLPA Has Had Open Invi­ta­tion to Review Bounty Info Since March 2

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