Diana Moskovitz
No
pictures. That’s what the biggest name in boxing, poised for one of the
signature fights of his career, says over and over again when asked
about the overwhelming evidence that he has a history of abusing women.
Ignore the police reports, the court records, and his own plea deals, he
says into the camera lens,
never an ounce of doubt on his face,
because there are no pictures. It’s a cliché of Internet life—pics or
it didn’t happen—and one that Mayweather has leveraged into making it
okay for millions of sports fans to plunk down $100 to watch him fight
Manny Pacquiao without an ounce of doubt about putting money directly in
the pocket of a misogynist.
To Katie Couric: “Did I kick, stomp and beat someone? No, that didn’t happen. I look in your face and say, ‘No, that didn’t happen.’”
To Stephen A. Smith:
“If I really did what they say I did, as far as beating a woman or
stomping a woman, I’m Floyd Mayweather, they would have brought pictures
out instantly. Still no pictures. No nothing.”
There are
pictures, though. In at least two cases of domestic violence, official
records show pictures were taken. In one case, a police report
explicitly says that the photos show a victim’s injuries. But
authorities in Las Vegas, a city poised to make millions off Floyd this
weekend, have either destroyed the photos or haven’t released them.
When I
first set out to get these pictures, I worried about what Deadspin would
do if we got them. A month later, I haven’t seen a single image.
Instead, I’ve gotten a crash course in how rules, regulations, and even
old-fashioned “we’ll get back to you when we feel like it” attitudes
keep the best evidence of Mayweather’s serial abuse of women under
wraps.
Mayweather
says “no pictures” and his adopted hometown, already raking in millions
off of him, makes sure it stays that way. What happens in Vegas does stay in Vegas, especially if that’s good for Vegas. It’s by design. Here’s how.
Destroying the evidence
My first
call was to the Clark County District Attorney’s Office, which told me
to try the court records. Las Vegas has two separate levels of court,
district and justice, and Mayweather has kept them busy. His name turns
up in 29 separate cases in justice court criminal records and another 16
times at the district level on a slew of issues ranging from illegal
parking to breach of contract to domestic violence. Felony and
misdemeanor cases start at the justice level, while felony cases
eventually move up to district.
Just three
cases involving accusations of violence against Mayweather have gone up
to district court. In two of those cases, district court spokeswoman
Mary Ann Price told me, no exhibits were submitted to the court. In the
third case, six photographs were admitted.
What was on
the photos isn’t said, but they’re from the case brought by prosecutors
after Josie Harris told police Mayweather kicked and punched her inside
his Bentley, then dragged her out by her hair. By the time the trial
came around, Harris told a different story, saying
she lied in her police report, and Mayweather
was acquitted.
As for the photos, they’ve been destroyed.
Is that
legal? In Nevada, absolutely. UNLV associate law professor Sara Gordon
said that in Nevada criminal cases anyone involved in a criminal case
can apply for an order asking that exhibits be released or destroyed. If
they are acquitted (and Floyd was) they can apply immediately
afterward. “In considering the application,” Gordon said, “the court
considers whether the loss of the evidence would prejudice any parties
in ongoing cases or in the event of a retrial, and whether there are any
appeals pending in the case.”
In this
case, the order for disposal came on Oct. 11, 2011, while another set of
domestic violence charges against Floyd worked their way through the
Las Vegas court system. In that case, once again Floyd was accused of
beating Harris, this time while their young children watched. The
request for disposal is half a page and signed by a district judge.
Records
show that before the exhibits were destroyed, Mayweather’s Vegas
lawyers, Richard A. Wright and Karen Winckler, asked that the exhibits
be released to them, and district Judge Lisa Marie Bell approved their
request. On Dec. 29, the clerk of the court filed a petition and order
that the records be disposed of or destroyed because “the exhibits are
believed by the Clerk to be of no value which would warrant their
delivery to the Board of County Commissioners of Clark County, Nevada,
as property of said County.” It was reviewed by a prosecutor and, on
Jan. 23, 2012, signed off on by a district judge.
In February, the exhibits were certified as destroyed.
This was two months after Mayweather
took a plea deal in his other domestic violence case. In that case, photos were taken, but nobody who has them in Vegas wants you to see them.
Locking the evidence away from the public
In the
early hours of of Sept. 9, 2010, Harris found Mayweather inside her
home, which Mayweather still owned despite their breakup. A fight about
the house being a little messy devolved into Mayweather being upset that
Harris was seeing another man, and Harris called the police, according
to the report. Mayweather left, then came back about 5 a.m. with a
friend. One of Mayweather’s children let him inside. Harris, asleep on
the couch, woke up to Mayweather holding her phone and screaming, “Are
you having sex with C.J.?” She answered yes, and the beating began—as
their children watched.
Mayweather
grabbed Harris by her hair and began striking her in the back of her
head with a closed fist several times. Mayweather pulled Harris off the
couch by her hair and twisted her left arm. Harris stated that
Mayweather began yelling at Harris “I’m going to kill you and the man
your are messing around with.” He also stated “Im going to have you both
disappear.” Harris tried to fight him off of her, and she thought he
was trying to break her arm by twisting it behind her back. Harris
screamed for the kids to call the police or run to the security guard
station. Mayweather turned to the kids and yelled at them that “He would
beat their asses if they left the house or called the police.” The
children were able to get out of the house and run to the security guard
station.
The police
report noted “Schmidt also took digital photographs of Harris’ injuries
and downloaded them into the LVMPD on-base system.”
One of
Mayweather’s sons, Koraun, wrote a statement for police about what he
saw that night. In the chunky writing of a child, Koraun describes
watching his father pummel his mother and signs with the kind of
signature usually saved for birthday cards or letters to Santa.
Despite the
photos, Harris’s statement, and Koraun’s gripping account, this case
never made it out of justice court. Before that could happen,
Mayweather pleaded guilty
to a reduced battery domestic violence charge and no contest to two
harassment charges and got a 90-day jail sentence, which was
delayed until after his Cinco de Mayo fight. Ultimately, Floyd didn’t even serve the full 90 days, instead getting out after two months thanks to good behavior.
Thanks to
his early plea deal, any photos of Mayweather’s night of terror remain
just one of 11 justice court case files that require a judge’s
permission to fully unlock.
Releasing the files that don’t make Mayweather look too bad
To view an
entire case file, and not just the selections deemed public, I was told I
needed to file a motion for “disclosure of non-public information.” I
filed 11 motions for all 11 justice court files that involved charges of
violence or harassment and Mayweather. A judge says yes or no, deciding
what of the non-public information will be released. Here is what I
told the justice court, making it clear my concern was his violence
toward women:
Floyd
Mayweather is a public figure and important member of the Las Vegas
community. He also has said publicly that there is no evidence of him
hitting women. He told Rachel Nichols on CNN, “Once again, no pictures.
Just hearsay and allegations. And I signed a plea-bargain. Once again,
not true.” To show if he is telling the truth or not, it is important to
review all of his case files.
So far I have received four files—and they mostly detail his violence toward men.
Within a
week, and with relative ease, I got a file from a 2001 case in which
Mayweather was charged with battery with use of a deadly weapon, but the
file ends when Mayweather’s case is moved to district court, where the
charge was dismissed, and the scant eight pages provided don’t even
describe the events leading up to the battery or whom Mayweather hurt.
The date of the incident it mentions, though—June 19, 2001—suggest it’s
connected to when Mayweather was
accused by a man of breaking a champagne bottle over his head at a Las Vegas night club.
I got the
full complaint and only slightly redacted arrest report (three pages in
total) from when Mayweather was accused in 2010 of jabbing a male
security officer in the cheek. Mayweather
pleaded no contest.
By far the
lengthiest file I got—a full 18 pages—was from 2011, when Floyd was
charged with two counts of misdemeanor harassment after threatening two
security guards over parking tickets. The criminal complaint said
Mayweather told them that his crew had guns and Mayweather would call
them to come over and “take care of” them.” Mayweather was found not
guilty, although not before Mayweather’s legal team offered a bizarre
solution, one guard told
the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
Would the guard want the case dismissed if in return Mayweather
“apologized, shook his hand and gave him tickets to his next fight”? (He
declined.)
The fourth
case is the only one that involved a woman, and it’s possibly the most
minor of all the accusations against Mayweather. It’s an old misdemeanor
case—Mayweather was accused of grabbing a woman by the shirt and
shaking her back and forth—from more than a decade ago. It was quickly
dismissed when nobody, including the woman involved, showed up for the
trial.
As for all
those other files, I got an email on April 9 asking me to clarify my
request on three files, so I narrowed what I wanted to any
documentation, photographs, or evidence that showed Mayweather’s
violence toward women. If evidence had been destroyed, I also asked for
copies of the documentation showing the destruction.
Today, I
called and emailed the justice court staff attorney asking for an
update. Before justice court closed, all I got was an update on one
case, saying the file would cost $485.50.
Tommasino
suggested a narrow request could be filled faster, so I resent him what I
had sent another member of the legal staff on April 9. Before the close
of justice court at 4 p.m. PST today, I hadn’t heard back.
Las Vegas police give the full runaround
I reached
out to the Clark County District Attorney’s Office a second time, this
time with a formal written request for any photos. They responded that
the “legal custodian” of the photographs was the Las Vegas police
department. I already had sent the police department an email asking for
“copies of any photos taken or collected as part of the various
battery, stalking, harassment, and coercion investigations involving
Floyd Mayweather.” My request asked that the police department get back
to me by email or phone if they had any questions or needed more
information to fulfill my request.
I didn’t
hear back for a week, so I called and asked what had happened to my
request. I was told by the public information office that they needed
more information to process it. When I asked why nobody had told me this
earlier (my email explicitly said to reach to me if they needed more
information) the response was that they hadn’t gotten to my request yet.
The next
day, Friday, I sent them a list with every detail for every case that I
knew of involving Mayweather and accusations of violence involving
women. It included names of victims, birthdates, locations, court case
numbers, and in one case the police report number as well.
I didn’t
hear back, so I called Monday and left a message. This was the response I
got from Officer Jesse Roybal. (It should be noted that I gave Las
Vegas police the same type of information I’ve used to request police
files across the country.)
Good
afternoon. Unfortunately these numbers refer to the court case. We do
not track our reports through this system. We track our reports via an
LVMPD event number. I am not sure if we will be able to locate the
reports. I will see what we can find out, however if you are able to
help us we will try and track down the events. Thank you.
Perhaps he
didn’t notice that in one case I did include the police report number,
or that I included names, dates, and locations, which also can be used
by agencies to locate cases.
So I wrote back, asking what other
information he needed and offering to send along press reports from some
of the more high-profile arrests.
That got me this response:
Good
afternoon. I have some of my records researchers attempting to locate
these reports at this time. I do not know how long it will take to
locate them.
I wrote
explaining that all I was looking for was photographs or images, not the
reports. I checked in again the next day and was told Roybal was “still
trying to track down these events.” He asked me to check in with the
Clark County District Attorney or Las Vegas City Attorney because “they
may have the photos accessible already.”
Of course, I
had already checked in with the district attorney’s office, and they
were the ones who sent me to the police. I wrote back saying I had
already tried that route and offered to narrow it down to two cases
which I knew were very high-profile and had pictures. My email back
included the name of the victim, her birthdate, the approximate time of
the beating, anda copy of the the 2010 police report that detailed what
happened and noted that pictures had been taken.
This was the response:
Good
afternoon. Regarding your request for photos, we are unable to fulfill
this request. There are retention periods where some of these events
would not be accessible due to policy concerning the retention period.
Further, due to the intimate nature of the photos, in addition to the
privacy and evidentiary nature of the photos, they will not be released.
Any photos that were entered into evidence during an open court
proceeding can be attempted to be released by contacting the court of
jurisdiction. Thank you for your understanding in this matter.
In other
words, I need to get them from the courts—the same courts that have
either destroyed the photos or still haven’t decided if I can see the
full case files. So that’s how this works.
Victims with conflicting interests
There are
other custodians of the images showing the horror Mayweather inflicts:
the women he beats. The most candid is Harris, who has given several
interviews over the years. In a recent article, Harris said she has
photographs of the damage Mayweather inflicted, but won’t release them
because,
she told Brandon Sneed, she doesn’t want to hurt him.
She
doesn’t want to hurt Mayweather, to make him suffer any more than she
thinks he already does. She could. She has pictures of what his abuse
has done to her, but she hasn’t released them, for some of the same
reasons she has lied for him, which she did many times after many
assaults over many years—protecting him from the police, keep him out of
prison, trying to save him.
“I
don’t think that somebody who loves themselves correctly abuses other
people,” she says. “Because loving somebody—the most important part is
loving yourself first, right?”
This is
perhaps the cruelest part of the victims Mayweather chooses. They’re
mostly women who have emotional relationships with him, sometimes even
children with him. They still care for him, despite the bruises,
concussions, and death threats, because domestic violence is
a cycle of power and control that is difficult to escape.
Like many domestic abusers, Mayweather wins them back with apologies,
lavish gifts, and promises he’ll never do it again—taking advantage of
his power and control over them—and then hits them again.
The same
feelings that make it so hard to break out of an abusive relationship
make it hard to release the surest proof that Mayweather beats women.
It’s easy to throw everything you have at a stranger on the street who
slugs you in the face. It’s not easy to do the same with the father of
your children.
Las Vegas was built to do this
Somehow,
this whole tragedy makes sense once the context comes into
consideration. The sun-baked desert dream machine of Las Vegas, a city
built into a modern paradise by the mob, was once
an “open city”
for all family members; today it’s just as open—or conveniently
closed—for the likes of Mayweather. His biggest-ever fight is pouring
dollars into the city ravaged by foreclosures
just a few years ago. Few have any interest in turning off the tap.
The idea of
an American city bending over backward for quick and easy cash isn’t
new. What’s special about Las Vegas is the openness with which it
happens, as if this is just how business is done. In 2006,
the Los Angeles Times outlined
a “stacked judicial deck” in the city, thick with cronyism and
conflicts of interest, where big donations by lawyers equate to
favorable rulings from judges. A ballot initiative that hoped to fix
this
failed. More recently, the city has been the home of right-wing sugar daddy Sheldon Adelson, whose company
might have bribed foreign officials.
And a
justice of the peace can be openly swayed to delay a man’s sentence,
despite multiple allegations of abuse, because his fights make money.
As the Associated Press explained in 2012:
[Justice
of the peace Melissa] Saragosa said she was swayed by the last-minute
plea from Mayweather’s lawyer, Richard Wright, to let Mayweather
postpone jail time so he can train to fight on the May 5 date his
promoters promised months ago to pay-per-view television and the MGM
Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
Wright
said Mayweather wasn’t trying to avoid the sentence, and emphasized the
potential economic benefit of attracting fight fans and hotel guests to
Las Vegas for a Mayweather fight. The lawyer estimated that
Mayweather’s last seven fights in Las Vegas generated a combined $1
billion in business to the community. He projected the economic boost
from a May 5 fight at more than $100 million.
“The
summer was lousy. I don’t know where you are from but if you got money,
this town needs you. You do have money? The gas thing killed us in June
and July with those people who used to drive over from L.A. With the
big auto workers and steel people layoffs back East, forget the
blue-collar trade. You can even forget those school teachers from Iowa.”
“So the fight means a lot?” I asked him.
“The fight means everything.”
Why there will probably never be pictures
We
shouldn’t need to see the pictures. The overwhelming evidence should be
enough. The guilty and no contest pleas should be enough. The words of
so many women should be enough. But seeing pictures—in all their
grotesqueness and horror—is unfortunately the only way to prove a man
hit a woman. It’s part of why officers take these pictures, to show a
judge and a jury what happened.
“When
you’re in a front of a judge, you describe the injuries written in the
complaint, the bruising, the swelling, the blood,” prosecutor Scott E.
Kessler
told the New York Times
for a 2007 story about how digital cameras were changing domestic
violence investigations. “But until a person sees another human being
with those injuries, with the swelling, the blood, the bruising, it’s
hard to get that point across.”
He was proven right last year, when
TMZ published the video of Ray Rice
knocking out his future wife, Janay, with one swift punch. Before the
video was published, Rice was poised to return to football after a short
suspension. Afterward, Rice was gone for an entire season and dumped by
his team. He’s still
searching for a chance to play.
There has
been no elevator-tape moment for Mayweather, though, despite his long
and well-documented history of beating up women, and there probably
never will be.
Las Vegas has made sure of it.
Image via Getty
Posts
The panel actually calls this technique Sun Radiation Management
(SRM). The problem with management is that managers are then necessary;
and the ones that have been appointed should not be to our liking.
