Rover Has Feelings, Too: The Michael Vick Saga

Ok, I'm going to jump in the ring with my two cents on this whole Michael Vick affair. If you haven't heard by now . . . you live under a rock, and frankly, I'm not sure how you found my blog but haven't head about Michael Vick. So, I'm going to assume you know the deal.

It seems everyone has an opinion, and that PETA is leading the charge to slay this man in the court of public opinion before (and if) he ever sees the inside of a courtroom (except when he was arraigned). Now I won't go as far as this comment did on a recent ESPN article:

toniokareem (8/18/2007 at 2:15 PM)
Gsmond...they're dogs....Matter of fact...they were his dogs, he paid for them. He raised them, and they were in his back yard. I could see if he attacked other people's dogs.

Now, as I said, I'm not going to go as far as toniokareem. I think there is something wrong withthis picture. I thought it was wrong when I went on a camping trip in fifth grade and watched some boys play "baseball" with frogs and tree limbs.

But don't we also condone sport shooting and hunting, sport fishing? I don't see PETA trying to tie up fishermen with their own lines like they are doing to Vick. We don't even know if he ever actually participated in any of the abuse.

The bottom line, though, is that the current indictment against him comes with a maximum six-year penalty. If they add racketeering to the mix,as they are suspecting, then he's looking at a twenty-year maximum sentence for that offense alone.

This twenty years may or may not be added on top of the six years for the initial charges, depending on whether he would have to serve the terms consecutively or concurrently. Consecutively means that he'd be serving a maximum of 26 years; concurrently means that the sentence for racketeering would start running at the same time as the initial charges, so that he would be looking at a maximum of 20 years. If that doesn't make any sense, check this out.

But all that is just speculation. I read the entire indictment and it seems to me that they are going to need other people to connect Vick to the worst facts because the feds do not have an open and shut case against him personally.

If he chooses to plea, which he may given what he's up against, he's guaranteed to get less than maximum sentence (hence why it's called a plea "deal" because no one would enter one if they weren't getting something better than they thought they could get at trial).

There are some pretty heinous allegations out there, but I can't hang the man out to dry just yet without knowing the facts. Some things just smell a little funny: he didn't live there, did he really need the money, etc.

Plus, when:

(1) I bet PETA wasn't there when this musher was suspended from Iditarod* competitions for two years for allegedly beating his sled dogs during a race,

and (2) Prisoner Jonathan Lee "kick him while he's down" Riches© (yes, he has copyrighted his name) is suing Vick for $63 billion "backed by gold and silver" and delivered to the prison, claiming that, among other allegations, Vick "sold [his] dogs on Ebay, and used the proceeds to buy missles [sic.] from the Iran government," I start to wonder what this is really all about.

My question is this: If this were Peyton Manning, would this be as big of a deal?




*This mention does not make Iditarod a sport.