Quote:
Originally Posted by IliketoPuck
Humour me, illustrious legal minds, on my thoughts below. Not a “will this result in a conviction or not” perspective, but one that attempts to hypothesize how the stories have diverged so substantively over time.
If there was absolutely nothing to this, why did Hockey Canada cut a multimillion dollar cheque in return for an NDA?
My thought is that because whatever they were paying to keep quiet via the NDA was damaging enough in their view to warrant millions of dollars. But that information can’t be included as evidence, because the hockey players careers were coerced / threatened. Which, again, why would they lie to make things worse when facing that kind of pressure from Hockey Canada? Purely my opinion, but I think they were threatened and came clean, and because there were no criminal charges at the time, that would have been it after Hockey Canada purchased EMs silence. Once the story broke and became public interest, the criminal investigation nullified the NDA, bringing things to light.
Carter Hart and Detective Newton’s testimony this week is not consistent with a story that requires a multi million dollar settlement, in my view.
I fully expect the legal proceedings to result in a not guilty verdict. It sure seems like once the text messages were ruled inadmissible that the prosecution began to speed run this trial without a cogent strategy to proving things beyond reasonable doubt. Perhaps their strategy is now to appeal the likely outcome?
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The fact that the HC settlement included players that were later not only not charged but not even in the room indicates to me that it wasn't an accurate or thorough investigation. Definitely not up to the legal rigors to be used as evidence as some of the players implicated didn't even know they were implicated and had no chance to defend themselves.
I agree though that it is troublesome that HC has a slush fund and is so eager to just pay out to make things go away, but I think that isn't necessarily directly linked to this specific incident. It says a lot about the institution itself though.