The Ezekiel Elliott Case Is a Clusterfuck

Last week, the NFL officially concluded its investigation into domestic violence accusations made against Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott last year, and found "substantial and persuasive evidence" that he "engaged in physical violence against" his ex-girlfriend Tiffany Thompson. Commissioner Roger Goodell suspended him for six games, and Elliott has officially appealed the suspension. Since then, everything has gone to shit.

The case against Elliott—a superstar after just one year as a pro, playing for one of the more storied franchises in the league—has drawn rabid coverage from a sports media and public that is currently incapable of hashing out the nuances involved in these cases. Add in the importance of his on-field performance and the tunnel vision many have when it comes to the football season, and the conversation quickly changes from a disciplinary action to a quest for justification.

The NFL, of course, is partly responsible for getting itself into this situation in the first place. After coming under huge fire for how he handled the Ray Rice incident in 2014, Goodell seems to be making up for it, or at least trying to preemptively satisfy his critics by appearing tough on domestic violence. That is a generally good thing, of course, but when you suspend a star player for roughly 40 percent of the season, people are going to want to know why, and they will try to undermine the decision if they're not satisfied with the explanation.

Now the NFL's Elliott ruling has opened the league up to the very criticism it was trying to avoid, as those sympathetic to the running back raise concerns about Thompson's credibility. When the Columbus prosecutors office declined to pursue charges last September, it released the case file, which included a sworn affidavit from one of Thompson's friends. The friend stated that on the night Thompson reported the incident to police, she got into a physical altercation with a woman at a bar, and then later asked her to lie to police and tell them Elliott ripped her out of her car and assaulted her. More recently, Yahoo obtained a copy of the NFL's 160-page report on the case and yesterday reported on a text-message transcript between Thompson and a friend discussing possibly blackmailing Elliott with a sex tape. There have also been reports that Thompson threatened to ruin his career.

All of this is playing out in front of a public that is much less concerned with justice and domestic violence than it is football. For this specific topic, it's a toxic situation. Through its clumsy handling of this matter, the NFL may unwittingly validate all the old, harmful tropes of domestic violence accusers—that they are looking for money from rich men, or are out for revenge—instead
of actually protecting domestic violence victims and discouraging violent behavior throughout the league.

Prosecuting a domestic violence case in the United States can often feel Sisyphean for a number of reasons. There are often no other witnesses other than the victim and the abuser. Victims may feel as though they can't come forward for fear of retribution, or that they have too much to lose—among the many reasons that they either don't report incidents, or change their minds during an investigation and stop cooperating. The Bureau of Justice Statistics found that from 2006 to 2015, 44 percent of domestic violence incidents each year, on average, went unreported; 19 percent of victims claimed fear of reprisal as a reason for not reporting, and 21 percent said they were trying to protect the abuser.

These are complicated matters that not even the justice system, with literally centuries of procedural rules and precedent intended to assist impartial triers of fact wade through testimony and evidence and arrive at something approximating justice, can get right. And now we're left with the NFL and Goodell trying to figure it out by the seat of their pants.

The standards for criminal prosecution are much higher than what the NFL requires for punishment under its personal conduct policy, as they should be. As we have learned, the NFL's standards for punishment are ambiguous at best, with Goodell serving as judge and jury. The public has no real way of assessing an NFL decision; we don't know if we can rely on it as anything other than p.r. damage control.

Unfortunately, once prosecutors in Columbus declined to pursue the allegations—with the lead attorney telling USA Today, "I personally believe that there were a series of interactions between Mr. Elliott and (his accuser) where violence occurred"—the only place left for this case to go was the NFL, and therefore the court of public opinion, where standards are nonexistent. That's how we get piecemeal stories like the Yahoo report on the text messages, and the claims that Thompson wanted to ruin Elliott's career. And it's how we now have the NFL and the NFLPA engaging in a pissing contest about a domestic violence case:

These claims would have also come out in a criminal trial and be part of the public record, but there they would be subject to rules of evidence, cross examination, and a jury would be instructed by an impartial judge on how to interpret them (although even then, people don't leave their preconceived notions about domestic violence at the court room door). Instead, we have the NFL and the NFLPA, organizations with very clear biases to cover their asses, using a sports media that can't ever see the forest for the trees to push their individual agendas. No one currently involved in this case is adequately suited to be leading an investigation or a defense of a domestic violence charge, and they're the only ones left.

This is now a labor-management situation, with domestic violence once again getting short shrift. And all anybody cares about is when will Ezekiel Elliott play again.