Judge Marc Hammer denied the motion to permanently seal evidence in the battery case of Green Bay Packers running back Josh Jacobs, which includes a video from inside Jacobs’ garage, on Thursday. The evidence was previously under a temporary seal at the request of Jacobs, but Hammer denied the victim’s request to permanently seal the evidence.
Evidence will now be in the hands of the Hobart-Lawrence Police Department, which will handle requests for the video moving forward.
This is a notable shift
in the Jacobs case, as it was previously reported that the NFL was attempting to acquire the video, but had not yet received it. Jacobs is currently on the commissioner exempt list, which prevents him from seeing the field or practice time — but he can still participate in meetings in the Packers’ building. The NFL has yet to make a suspension announcement on Jacobs because they wanted to talk to the back and see the video before they made a ruling.
As the league learned during the Ray Rice case, the NFL is only allowed to punish a player for a single action once, and can’t punish a player further for the same infraction if the video eventually ended up in the public’s hands. Rice sued the league on the basis of that; the case went to arbitration and eventually ruled that the NFL’s initial suspension of Rice for two games stood, but their indefinite suspension must be dropped and that the back needed to be paid for the games beyond the two-game suspension.
Jacobs pleaded no contest to battery and criminal damage to property earlier this month. According to the police report, the video shows “the altercation,” and at least shows the victim on the ground for 40 seconds before Jacobs returns to the garage and damages the victim’s cellphone. What’s uncertain, because of the wording of the police report, is whether the video includes what led to the victim hitting the ground. In the police report, it states that Jacobs grabbed and threw the anonymous woman to the ground, resulting in injury, but it doesn’t explicitly state whether or not that was caught on video, unlike the damaging of her cellphone.
The anonymous woman was identified as Jacobs’ girlfriend, but because she did not live with Jacobs or have a child with Jacobs, the crime did not qualify for the domestic abuse enhancer in the state of Wisconsin.
Both Jacobs and the victim have an opportunity to appeal a request to release evidence (including the video) moving forward, but only at the level of the police department, not the district court’s office. Officially, the district court’s order to deny the permanent seal will be active on Friday. Hobart-Lawrence Police Department has 10 days to fulfill public records requests for evidence, so we should get answers — one way or another — soon.
