What the Dallas Cowboys’ Signing of a Man Found Guilty of Assault Says About the NFL (trigger)

trigger alert: This article contains graphic descriptions of intimate partner violence.

What the Dallas Cowboys’ Signing of a Man Found Guilty of Assault Says About the NFL

Greg Hardy signing with Dallas is yet more evidence that the NFL’s so-called commitment to combating violence against women is nothing more than lip service.





In July 2014, a judge found then-Carolina Panther defensive end Greg Hardy guilty of assault and communicating threats against Nicole Holder, a woman he had dated. When she testified during that trial, she told the court a horrific account of the night of May 13, when, Holder said, Hardy picked her up and threw her multiple times (one time down onto a pile of loaded guns); dragged her by her hair; and ripped off her jewelry and flushed it down the toilet. At one point, Holder said, Hardy put his hands around her throat: “He looked me in my eyes and he told me he was going to kill me. I was so scared, I wanted to die. When he loosened his grip slightly, I said, ‘Just do it. Kill me.’” Another person in the house called the police, telling the dispatcher, “He’s beating her ass in there. Some girl’s getting her ass beat upstairs and I heard it. And I seen it. He is beating her ass right the fuck now.” Holder was scratched, bruised all over her body, and there was swelling on her arms and back.

Hardy was sentenced to 18 months’ probation. On Wednesday, the Dallas Cowboys signed him to a one-year contract.

When reporting on Hardy’s conviction in July, the Associated Press reported:
Hardy’s attorney Chris Fialko said he’ll appeal and Hardy has asked for a jury trial in superior court. In North Carolina that means the terms of Hardy’s probation are on hold until the trial—so he’s free to travel with the team to training camp and compete in games.

And Carolina let him do both until September, when the angry public fervor over Ray Rice boiled over into large-scale awareness about Hardy’s case. He was then deactivated by the team and placed on National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell’s exempt list, meaning that although he could not play and the team could replace him on the roster while his case was pending, he was still paid. In late February, the Panthers released him.

Between the original bench trial in which he was found guilty and the jury trial Fialko requested on appeal, the district attorney prosecuting the case says Hardy settled with Holder in a civil suit. When the DA tried to locate Holder to have her testify again for the jury trial, they could not. There is no public documentation of the settlement and so no knowledge of whether it included an agreement not to testify, but the prosecution expected her to do so in the jury trial. When the DA last talked to her in November, she told them she did not want to testify again. She “intentionally made herself unavailable to the State,” prosecutors said in February. The result was that all charges against Hardy were dismissed last month.

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