Patriots Owner Robert Kraft Offered a Deal That Would Drop Charges

[Eugene]

Source: New York Times

Patriots Owner Robert Kraft Offered a Deal That Would Drop Charges

By Ken Belson
March 19, 2019

Robert K. Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, has been offered a deal that includes paying a fine and doing community service in return for admitting that if his soliciting prostitution case were to go to trial, the prosecutors would win.

The prosecutors in Palm Beach County, Fla., offered the deal to Mr. Kraft and 24 other men who last month were arrested on misdemeanor charges of buying sex at the Orchids of Asia day spa in Jupiter, Fla.

The police and prosecutors say the massage parlor is the focus of a wider investigation into human sex trafficking in several counties in Florida. Mr. Kraft — who faces two misdemeanor counts — and the other 24 men have been charged only with soliciting prostitution; they have not been charged with any crimes in connection to sex trafficking.

News of the plea offer was first reported in The Wall Street Journal.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/sports/robert-kraft-plea-deal-charges.html

[True Dough]

1. Don't tell me

this guy is going to "get off" again!

[global1]

3. Well - I Guess He'll Have A Happy Ending.....nt

[Funtatlaguy]

4. Kraft sauce cleanup on aisle rich guy.

[RockRaven]

2. This is disgraceful. HE'S ON TAPE. TWICE. There's no risk of losing this case, and he's

the public face of this ugly episode (tbh, there is a risk of losing, but it is of the "I don't care what the evidence is, I'm not going to convict him no matter what"-juror type). To let him skate sends the message that prosecutors DGAF about soliciting prostitution from a ring of sex traffickers.

[hughee99]

5. My understanding is that they would be required to stipulate that if this went to trial, they would

lose, and they have to serve a significant amount of community service (basically, the punishment they would have gotten had they been convicted). My guess is that Kraft's lawyers found something that might require them to throw out the video evidence (like maybe some technicality in the way they planted the cameras), and the prosecutors are concerned that this might damage their trafficking case. They may have decided that getting a bunch of misdemeanor charges against the johns isn't worth risking the larger case.