Ray Rice is preparing to appeal his indefinite suspension from the NFL, and one of his main defenses will reportedly center around a claim that the league extended his punishment after watching an edited tape.
According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the footage NFL officials saw of Rice hitting his then-fiancee Janay Palmer on an Atlantic City casino elevator and knocking her unconscious was a “cleaned-up, condensed version” of the original video. TMZ admitted that the original video was “jerky” and informed readers that they had cleaned it up a bit.
Robert Mueller, the man appointed by the NFL to investigate the league’s handling of the Rice incident, will have access to the full elevator video.
Even if the video was cleaned up, I don’t understand what more we need to see. Rice will probably argue that Palmer went after him more than the footage showed (he initially told his teammates he was defending himself), but unless TMZ altered the events in some way most people have probably seen all they need to see. You don’t throw a haymaker at a woman who is half your size.
