A Wisconsin judge has denied the request to permanently seal evidence in the battery case involving Green Bay Packers running back Josh Jacobs, clearing the way for the Hobart-Lawrence Police Department to handle any future requests for the video from inside Jacobs’ garage.
Judge Marc Hammer made the ruling Thursday. The evidence had already been under a temporary seal at Jacobs’ request, but Hammer rejected the victim’s bid to keep it sealed permanently.
That matters because the video has become a central piece of the case and, potentially, the NFL’s next move. The league had been trying to obtain the footage but had not yet received it.
Jacobs remains on the commissioner exempt list, meaning he cannot play or practice, though he is still allowed to take part in meetings at the Packers’ facility. The NFL has not announced a suspension, in part because it wanted to speak with the back and review the video before making a decision.
The situation also raises the same kind of issue the league faced in the Ray Rice case. The NFL can only punish a player once for a single act, and if video later becomes public, it cannot hand down an additional penalty for the same incident. In Rice’s case, he sued the league, the matter went to arbitration, and the ruling left his original two-game suspension intact while removing the indefinite suspension and requiring the league to pay him for the games beyond those two.
Jacobs pleaded no contest earlier this month to battery and criminal damage to property. According to the police report, the video shows “the altercation,” and at least captures the victim on the ground for 40 seconds before Jacobs returns to the garage and damages the victim’s cellphone.
What remains unclear is whether the footage also includes the moment that led to the victim hitting the ground. The police report says Jacobs grabbed and threw the anonymous woman to the ground, causing injury, but it does not explicitly say that part was recorded on video.
The woman was identified as Jacobs’ girlfriend, though the case did not qualify for Wisconsin’s domestic abuse enhancer because she did not live with him and did not have a child with him.
Both Jacobs and the victim can still appeal a request to release evidence, including the video, but only through the police department rather than the district court. The court’s order denying the permanent seal becomes active Friday, and the Hobart-Lawrence Police Department has 10 days to respond to public records requests for the evidence.
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