Dear
Judge Berman: fan letters in 'Deflategate' show passion, anger
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[September 10, 2015]
By Joseph Ax
NEW YORK (Reuters) - If the surreal saga
known as "Deflategate" has proven anything, it is that National Football
League fans take their sport, and Tom Brady, very seriously.
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Look no further than the people – including a lawyer, a chemist and
a schoolteacher – who wrote approximately 20 letters to U.S.
District Judge Richard Berman last month while he considered whether
to uphold the New England Patriots quarterback's four-game
suspension for an alleged scheme to deflate footballs used in a
January playoff game.
Massachusetts attorney Steven Kramer challenged Brady's suspension
on grounds including "double jeopardy, issue preclusion and
collateral estoppel," a legal doctrine that protects defendants from
being tried more than once in a criminal trial for the same issue.
Another man submitted a 61-page brief undercutting the NFL's
scientific evidence that the balls were intentionally deflated.
Vanessa Ivelich, a teacher in Reno, Nevada, asked Berman to uphold
Brady's ban for her students' sake.
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"How can teachers and coaches expect youngsters to abide by the
rules of fair play if their favorite player doesn't have to?" she
asked.
Berman threw out Brady's punishment on Sept. 3, saying the NFL's
appeal process suffered from serious legal flaws. The league has
said it is appealing the court decision.
The suspension was imposed over the footballs used in the first half
of the Patriots' 45-7 victory against the Indianapolis Colts that
sent them to the Super Bowl, where they defeated the Seattle
Seahawks.
The letters, mostly written in August, were posted publicly on
Wednesday in New York federal court.
The judge had pushed the two sides to settle the case, an outcome
some fans supported.
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Liz Minnerly, a Patriots fan, suggested the team concede the 17
unanswered points they scored during the first half of the Colts
game, when the controversial footballs were used.
That would make the final score 28-7, she wrote, while Brady could
serve a half-game suspension.
Other fans performed their own versions of the scientific
experiments the NFL commissioned to determine whether the footballs
were deliberately deflated.
Mark Saito, a chemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in
Massachusetts, told Berman his tests showed that winter weather
could result in depressurized balls.
“I have considered working up these results for a peer-reviewed
scientific publication, but frankly, I should probably spend my
limited energies on our studies of the oceans,” he wrote.
A woman, or perhaps a young girl, suggested in a handwritten note
that Berman need look no further than the Colts game, wondering how
a receiver who scored a touchdown could spike a deflated ball "about
5 feet or more" in celebration.
"Mega cheers for Tom Brady," she concluded.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Alan Crosby)
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