Former FBI Director Releases Report on NFL-Ray Rice Investigation

The former FBI director investigating the NFL’s handling of the Ray Rice case released his findings Thursday, which included a recommendation that the NFL retain a team of investigators trained in domestic violence and sexual assault cases.

The NFL commissioned former FBI director Robert Mueller III to oversee an independent investigation after conflicting reports came out regarding when and what NFL officials knew about former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice assaulting his then-fiancée inside an Atlantic City casino elevator on Feb. 15, 2014.

Despite signals that the case was a serious one—for example, Rice was charged with simple assault in February, which was kicked up to felony assault upon his indictment in March—the NFL has traditionally deferred to law enforcement in criminal matters, the report said.

Meuller summarized the league’s approach this way: “...it is less important to understand precisely what the player did than to understand how and when the criminal justice system addresses the event.”

When Rice was admitted into a pretrial intervention program last spring, the NFL “interpreted [it] as diminishing the seriousness of Rice’s conduct” and “did not critically evaluate the other key information that it had,” according to the 96-page report.

The Rice case illustrates the need for the NFL to look at its players in a greater context than the criminal justice system, the report continued, since the prosecution may not be successful even when there has been misconduct.

The personal conduct policy approved by the league on Dec. 10, 2014, calls for the NFL to do its own investigations, for which Mueller issued the following recommendations:

• Create or retain a specialized investigative team including experienced domestic violence and sexual assault investigators and victim witness advocates for domestic violence/sexual assault cases.
• Establish guidelines for conducting NFL investigations and provide training for security personnel, including how to conduct domestic violence and sexual assault investigations.
• Hire someone to take the lead on communication with the 32 security directors around the league, and make information-sharing mandatory. Darren Sanders, director of Ravens security, was given a detailed account of what happened between Rice and his then-fiancee by a detective, something NFL officials could not get; but he was never asked to communicate his findings outside the Ravens organization, according to the report. The recommendation is that it would be required.

Mueller’s report stated that league officials had not seen footage showing the former Baltimore Ravens running back striking his then-fiancee but “should have done more with the information it had” to try and get more details about the case, according to ESPN.

Related:

• Ray Rice Wins Appeal of Indefinite Suspension
• New Video of Ray Rice Shows What Happened Inside Elevator
• Janay Rice Speaks Out on Today Show in Reisterstown
• Ray Rice: ‘I Made a Horrendous Mistake’
• NFL Enacts Tougher Domestic Violence Penalties After Ray Rice Criticism

Report Says NFL Officials Did Not See In-Elevator Video

NFL officials claimed they had not seen the extent of the Rice assault until September.

However, the Associated Press said a law enforcement officer sent a copy of the video to the NFL and confirmed its receipt via voicemail in April. The Associated Press did not disclose its source.

Mueller said that the investigative team made “exhaustive efforts” to look into these allegations, including searching “millions of documents, emails and text messages” and 400 computers in the NFL network; probing cellular and other communications of Goodell and NFL executives; and hunting for evidence that a package delivery was made containing the DVD in question.

Ultimately, there was no evidence of knowledge of the Rice in-elevator tape, nor was there any trace of a video file that had been delivered, stored or viewed to NFL offices prior to the TMZ release, according to the report.

Robert Mueller suggested the NFL consider its players outside the scope of the legal system and conduct its own collaborative investigations. Photo Credit: Shutterstock.