New Jersey Lawmakers Seek Review Of Ray Rice Case
CAMDEN, N.J. (CBSNewYork/AP) -- The president of the New Jersey state Senate is calling for a review of the decision to let former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice into a program to allow him to keep his record clean after he was accused of assaulting his then-fiancee.
Democratic Senate President Steve Sweeney says the state should look into how Rice's case was handled and into the criteria for getting into the pretrial intervention program. His request comes a day after the revelation of a video showing Rice punching his fiancee in the Revel Casino Hotel in Atlantic City. Rice and the woman have since married.
The Ravens cut Rice -- a New Rochelle, New York native and former Rutgers University star -- on Monday. The NFL suspended him indefinitely after the video was made public that day.
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"And if this is standard operating procedure, and everyone thinks this is the norm, then we have to update our domestic violence laws," Sweeney told WCBS 880's Levon Putney.
Sweeney says domestic violence laws have not been looked at since the mid-90s and says even if legal precedence and protocols were followed, "That's fine, that's the way the law is, but then we need to fix the law."
New Jersey Lawmakers Seek Review Of Ray Rice Case
Rice has said his actions were "inexcusable."
Lisa Smith, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, told WCBS 880 on Tuesday that prosecutors were likely relying on the wishes of the victim, and they could clearly pursued a much more serious punishment.
"It is very unusual to have the video of an assault as evidence in a case and obviously would have been very, very powerful at a trial," Smith said. "It's clearly not a trial they were ever going to lose. So the ball was actually in the prosecutor's court here."
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