Commanders Post at The Warpath - NFL's Players Conduct Policy

Angry:

The law allows that someone may remain employed while he/she is being prosecuted for a criminal offense to determine if he/she is guilty. The law does NOT say that the accused's current employer MUST continue to employ him.

The NFL position is that playing there - or working for a team or for the NFL front office - is a privilege. Some events that lead to an arrest are sufficiently notorious that the NFL chooses not to continue the employment of the person being arrested on the same terms as existed prior to the arrest.

By the way, this situation applies to lots of other jobs too. If you are a police officer and you are arrested and charged with possession of narcotics with the intention to distribute the narcotics, the chances are slim that you will remain on the force and out on patrol all the time your case is in process.

Suppose I employ my neighbor's kid to mow my lawn every other week. If the kid is arrested and charged with burglary, do you believe that I MUST continue to employ him until his trial. I don't and I wouldn't.

Double jeopardy applies only to criminal law; it means one cannot be tried for the same time twice such that legal consequences can befall a person. Double jeopardy has nothing at all to do with NFL actions or the actions of any employer. The same thing goes for a social organization.

Suppose I am a member of a Lodge and I do something that gets my name smeared all over the newspapers casting the Lodge in a negative light. They can use their procedures to toss me out of the Lodge. AND I may someday also do jail time if a court convicts me. If that had anything at all to do with double jeopardy, then a court could never try someone after a Lodge tossed them out - - or the NFL suspended a player.

The simplest way for players/employees to stay away from these problems is to behave themselves. Just for example, don't carry an unlicensed handgun on your person and then reveal the presence of that unlicensed handgun by shooting yourself in the leg in a public place with a bunch of witnesses. That is not all that hard to avoid. I have lived more than six decades and have never come close to doing that - - and it took no real effort on my part to reach that level of achievement.