Got a thought-provoking note from a friend who is a brilliant attorney and passionate Nets fan, though he is not a criminal defense lawyer. About the Andray Blatche situation he wrote:
We obviously don’t know nearly enough to render ethical or legal judgment — what was his relationship to the other guys? what did he know about what they were up to and whether in fact the victim was drugged? (assuming she was a victim, which I am inclined to ).
But we (and they) don’t know nearly enough to absolve him either. Under anything but the best case scenario, what he did was ethically repugnant, and he could well be in legal jeopardy too, whether or not he was one of the assailants.
There’s no legal duty to prevent (or report) crime, and it’s not against the law to have a crime committed in one’s hotel room, but people who knowingly provide the means for crimes to be committed (drugs, hotel rooms, cameras) can surely be prosecuted as accessories — or at least threatened with prosecution and made to testify against the (even more) bad guys.
It doesn’t surprise me that they didn’t arrest him on the spot — they knew for sure he wasn’t the assailant and they know where to find him if they need him; but I think the case (and the fall-out from incident) are far from over.
It’s all very sad.
In other words, just because Blatche was absolved of the crime of rape, it doesn’t mean he’s out of the woods ethically or even legally. As a legal matter, he’s innocent until proven guilty, of course, but we dont have enough information yet to know whether he did something wrong.
