Ray Paulick has been on a tear on Twitter lately, naming names. Mostly, he’s named owners who’ve used Super Villain Jorge Navarro, and good for him.
Jorge Navarro plead guilty to a single Fed charge of misbranding conspiracy and was sentenced recently to the maximum limit of five years allowed for the charge. Initially, Navarro was indicted on two charges of misbranding, with a maximum term of 10 years, but there was a plea deal in place that reduced the charge to one count if he admitted guilt to everything he’d done and named names of prominent horses he’d drugged, etc.
The takeaway here is that he was indicted and then plead guilty. It’s easy to get indicted by a grand jury, because the burden of proof isn’t as high as it is to get convicted in a court of law.
A court of law isn’t the court of public opinion. There’s something that says a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty in our legal system, regardless of public opinion.
Navarro admitted guilt. Had he plead not guilty, as he originally did before changing his plea, then a jury in a court of law would have decided his fate.
Super Villain Jason Servis was indicted on one count of misbranding. He has not admitted guilt so far, and unless he changes his plea like Navarro did, his case will be determined in court. Servis, then, must be presumed innocent of the charge until and if he is found guilty after a trial.
Paulick, like the court of public opinion, appears not to acknowledge this important distinction. Now, the public is entitled to vent all they want, and there’s nothing wrong with the public scalding Servis and branding him a guilty cheat. That’s the public’s right to free speech.
However, Paulick recently tweeted this, with Servis mentioned as if being indicted is the same as being convicted. That’s the sly takeaway, if you’re the public, and you get fired up by it, right?
A journalist like Paulick should be more measured in his comments, especially if he wants to be taken seriously. If he wants to be the ring leader of a lynch mob, however, that’s another matter.
And that’s what he looks like he wants to be.
As Mr Fantastik said in MF DOOM’s “Rap Snitch Knishes,” Paulick appears to aspire to this:
Play a fake gangsta like a old accordion
Playing a fake gangsta
When Al Zarooni, trainer of a large group of Godolphin horses, was convicted of drugging horses with steroids in Great Britain, he was suspended for 8 years and the Godolphin horses in that stable were suspended for six months. I believe that is a fair way to handle the owner problem.
The Crown Price of Dubai put his youngest wife in charge of an independent investigation to fix the problem. It is good to be the Prince.
He's grown a pair since '11 when he was much nicer towards quote providing owners. Hmm, I can't help but wonder if a quote from Dubb would have softened his tone.
https://www.paulickreport.com/news/the-biz/tracks-owners-face-decision-about-dutrow/