Julio Mateo under questioning for assault
Dave · May 5, 2007 at 11:54 am · Filed Under Mariners
Details are vague right now, but this is what we know – Julio Mateo has been accused of assault by a woman from an incident last night at the team hotel. He’s turned himself in and is cooperating with authorities. It is very unlikely he’ll be with the team at Yankee Stadium this afternoon.
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The third degree assault charges only came now when he has been formally indicted with a crime. Suspects can be brought in for questioning but they remain nothing but suspects until the line of questioning is finished and the police make a formal charge of crime against an individual.
All this happened recently. We made our judgements about Mateo being a “wifebeater” well before that. Our “knee jerk” reactions irked me to no end. I believe in the letter and measure of the law and that we cannot assign blame and guilt until after a man has had his day in court.
But he only got five minutes from some…
Police do not lead you away in handcuffs if you’re an innocent man.
Actually, yes, yes they do.
http://www.innocenceproject.org/
I’ll choose to reserve my judgment until I know more.
Yeah. Innocent people get led away in cuffs frequently.
I’m going to laugh if this blog’s readers as a group try to paint this as Julio Mateo, Innocent Man Wronged, given the simple details.
TIF, please try and paint this as a misunderstanding.
(Multiple sources are now confirming it was his wife he hit.)
Dude, you are seriously unclear on the point. We’re just saying that until people with a lot more knowledge than we have make a decision on the situation, it doesn’t make sense for us to do so.
NEW YORK — Seattle Mariners reliever Julio Mateo was suspended for 10 days without pay Sunday, a day after he was arrested following a dispute with a woman at a Manhattan hotel.
Julio Mateo
Mateo
Mateo was suspended for missing Saturday’s game without permission, the Mariners said. The suspension, if allowed to stand, would cost him $54,645 of his $1 million salary this year.
The Players’ Association will appeal that one in a heartbeat.
I expect the M’s organization to release Mateo if he’s found guilty of anything. It is, at this point, far too early to make any sort of judgement on whether or not he’s guilty of anything. That’s why we have trials: To separate the guilty from the innocent.
55. I understand the basic concept of reserving judgment until suitable information is available, but c’mon.
People with more knowledge than us, i.e. the NYPD and the media, have already confirmed that Mateo’s wife was struck in his hotel and needed stitches and that he turned himself in voluntarily without denying he had struck her, and that a violent commotion was heard in their hotel room. What, did she fall down the stairs?
Gomez,
I want to stress that I’m not trying make this personal against you as though I’m only attacking your point of view. You’re here, tho, making your case, so I’m replying to you but speaking against a general human behavior to be quick to judge.
/disclaimer
You’re taking the “if it looks like duck, quacks like a duck” approach to this and while we here amongst the “geeky” sabermetrical community use a lot of probabilities in our baseball analysis, when it comes to a matter of crime nad punishment, facts and investigation results are more important. Speculation in court gets immediately thrown out by the judge.
Besides that, when you mention that the media have confirmed things and the media’s reports change from “wife” to “maybe not wife” to “wife” again and the speculation goes from “hit” to “bit”, I don’ts ee how you can find those sources are reliable.
Moreover, the context of the situation is important. Yes, Mateo turned himself in under the charge of assault, but was that because he admitted it and will plead guilty or is it because he’s turning himself in as an innocent man cooperating with the police to clear his name? Do we know for sure he admitted anything? And since when is “not denying” anything an admission of guilt?
Wifebeater or mistressbeater? Or is it wifeBEATER or wifeEATER?
I’m just saying…
Julio Mateo may in fact be guilty of domestic abuse, but in general the American criminal (in)justice system is nothing to put one’s faith in. Blacks, Latinos, and other people of color are disproprionately subject to harrassment, arrest, and ultimately imprisonment by America.
60,
Oh lawd…
61, Nice comeback.
His kids were in the hotel room next door and heard him roughing her up. He spoke remorsefully to the media about how much he loved and appreciated his wife dewspite what he did. He did not deny to the press he did it.
How much more proof do you need, or are you doing everything in your power to refuse to believe this happened?
NY Post article on this
So, where’s the “remorsefully speaking to the media” stuff? I’m not finding it on Google News.
How much more proof do I need? I’ll take a conviction in a court of law. Fair enough?
No one here or elsewhere is arguing that Mateo is innocent. We’re arguing that he has a legal right to due process, and that right will be, and should be, fully exercised before a final judgement is made. That’s how justice works. Unless you work for Alberto Gonzalez or Don Rumsfeld.
Okay, 62, my first comeback was just to ignore the obvious and irrelevant troll with a nonsensical reaction. This is my real reaction:
Oh lord, well there’s no convincing you otherwise is there so what’s the point? You made your inane conclusion based on your own opinions and there’s not a whole lot else to say. Way to go making a indefensible point juxpositioning the popular notion of American racism and the criminal justice system. You played the card nicely and there’s really no way to refute your claim because there’s no way to find evidence to disprove it. So I guess you’re right, in your own mind, and in your own way. Can we now talk about something relevant to Julio Mateo, the fact that he HASN’T BEEN CONVICTED OF ANYTHING YET, and the fact that people have hung the man before he even gets his day in court?
It must be mentioned that O.J. Simpson is a free man and was never convicted of any crime. He was later ‘found liable’ for his wife’s murder but all that netted was a bunch of fines he’s never going to pay anyway.
Also, it must be mentioned that men who hit their wives often escape charges because their wives decline to press charges. Many of these wives are homemakers and rely on their husbands for financial support and would be up the creek if said husband ended up in the can.
Also, as Geoff Baker mentioned on his blog, defendents in these cases frequently plead to lesser charges and are let off the hook. It is likely Mateo is let off and allowed to rejoin the team. I say so be it if that ends up being the case.
That doesn’t mean he didn’t do it.
BTW, you’ll all be pleased to know that our arguments have been summed up by Gomez on the Stranger’s blog. We are “a legion of kids” and, by implication, we are “fucking dense” as well.
Sorry, I should have specified “those of us saying innocent until proven guilty.”
You should have just went ahead and linked it.
Anyway, still waiting on that “Mateo speaking remorsefully to the press” stuff. “Why the f- – – don’t you guys leave me alone?” doesn’t sound very remorseful.
The point has been made that “innocent until proven guilty in a court of law” is a LEGAL standard. I agree. What the prosecutor described to the court in the Post article doesn’t make Mateo look very good…. but I’m also fine with letting a grand jury grind the wheels of justice. THAT is what I meant by “until I know more”, Gomez, but thanks for overgeneralizing!
EC: It’s also true that to make the accused look bad is, well, the prosecutor’s JOB. I thought that Post article did a poor job of making it clear that the prevailing perspective was that of the prosecuting attorney.
It also bears mentioning that the Post tends to be more tabloid-ish in their coverage…. but there’s not a lot of positive spin you can put on 5 stitches and a restraining order, either.
Yes, the article they linked is not the best of sources, for certain, but it’s the Stranger, so what do you expect? They’re always fishing these various sorts of pubs for news items.
Geoff Baker, who has been in New York with the team all this time, is probably a more reliable source on the subject.
It was actually eponymous coward who linked to the article I was referring to, not the Stranger.
Ah, noted.
Geoff Baker’s blog update and the statement from Mateo certainly does make it sound like he committed the violent acts. Now that this is out, though, I still don’t feel bad about not presuming he was guilty yesterday.
Certainly, and without that information, I’m probably in agreement with everybody that says we not rush to judgment.
OK, I think I’d go with what Baker said.
I understand Mateo doesn’t want to plead guilty to anything in public right now and ruin his chance to get a more lenient court result later on than the maximum one year in prison he now faces. He is simply covering his butt as his lawyer has instructed. The Mariners are going along with that plan and that’s their perogative.
But we don’t have to.
If we’re going to be asked by a ballplayer to print an apology, then we shouldn’t have to pretend he is apologizing for stuff he may or may not have done. That’s just ridiculous. So, there it is. No “alleged” to lessen the impact. No pretense.
Gomez: whaaaaa?
Are you now saying that before the Mateo statement you agree he shouldn’t have been prejudged?
His statement, save for all but confirming he did it, isn’t relevant to the information we already had. Statements are contrived and very measured, thus should be taken with a grain of salt.
Typical Idiot Fan: Your nickname seems to describes you well. Are you a cop, DA, judge, or something? Your overreaction to my comment is just a *bit* defensive.
All I said was that Mateo may in fact be guilty, but the American criminal injustice system in general ain’t so just to minorities in the USA. How is that “inane”? Ever heard of “Driving While Black”? Abner Louima? Amadou Diallo? Sean Bell?
Yep, here come the personal flames. Can we end this now?
TIF: Personal flames began with your “troll” rhetoric. But ending this is fine by me.
Yes, but ignoring the “all but confirming he did it” part is like ignoring Vidro’s OPS because he’s hitting .312. It’s a de facto admission- and surely relevant.
I’m sort of confused as to why waiting a day or two to come to a conclusion about what happened is the same as “com(ing) to the defense of such an obvious wifebeater in your entire life”, but hey…