Here's more of the story regarding the perjury charge against Jackson. It actually comes from a suit he brought against Comiskey for back pay on his contract after he got banned from baseball, and actually won via a jury trial. The judge however threw the case out and claimed that he wouldn't agree with the jury because he claimed Jackson had perjured himself. There was no actual indictment per se, and thus no charges ever brought. But it did get get Comiskey out of having to pay Jackson anything.
https://onmilwaukee.com/articles/sho...trialmilwaukee
Also, isn't it a bit odd how transcripts and documents that supposedly were lost and couldn't be found from back when the 1919 Black Sox trial was going on suddenly and miraculously appeared, coming from Comiskey's attorneys no less, to allow the judge in this civil case to find a reason to rule against Jackson and vacate a valid jury decision?
The more I see and hear about this, the more I come to believe that Jackson was a pawn in this whole thing and used and manipulated by those around him. Was he wrong for ever getting involved in this and supposedly keeping the money he admitted being given, yes? But when you read and hear about all the other circumstances surrounding this it appears that he was not a willing participant and clearly not an instigator of the of the whole mess. In law, intent and motive can play a big part in someone's guilt or innocence. It was said that he didn't ask for the money and it was literally thrown at him, and that he tried to give it back, but the others wouldn't take it, so he ended up keeping it. What if instead of just keeping the money Jackson and his wife had donated it to some charity? Would that change anyone's mind today, or have maybe swayed MLB and the HOF to have let him in? Of course we'll never know.
For all the people who are so righteous and strictly follow all rules and laws and say he's guilty and broke the rules, and therefore should have been banned from baseball and ineligible for the HOF, just remember, there was no specific rule about this in baseball at the time of his alleged offense. And if you go back through all the rules changes that have occurred in baseball over the last 150 or so years, never once has any change in the rules been retroactively applied. How many of you knew that prior to 1931, if a player hit a ball that bounced in the outfield and then it went over the fence that it was considered a home run? Has anyone ever gone back and asked about adjusting the records then so they comply with the modern rules? Or look at the current issue in baseball regarding pitchers using foreign substances, should there be a review and revision to all earlier pitchers now because of it? And here's a really good one. How many times in the history of MLB have you heard or seen of an instance where a pitcher deliberately threw at a batter? Happens quite a bit, unwritten rules of baseball and all that, right? How many of those pitchers have ever been arrested and charged with assault (and battery if they actually hit the batter)? Forget the fact that the baseball Commissioner can fine and suspend them per Rule 21, intentionally throwing at and hitting someone with a baseball is a clear violation of actual criminal laws pretty much everywhere in the U.S., and having it occur on the field during a ballgame is no exception or excuse. But no one ever gets arrested and charged do they? One big reason is probably because the players being thrown at and hit don't/won't ever press charges and the baseball community as a whole follows their unwritten rules that throwing at someone is part of the game and therefore, you don't go after them outside of baseball. So what if players suddenly started to ask authorities to press charges against these pitchers? Just think how police, prosecutors, the MLB itself, and even the fans, would initially react and how they would likely be against it and try to ignore the charges and such because of the negative impact on the game.
Back in Jackson's day the circumstances weren't that much different. People knew of the gamblers and their potential influence on ballplayers and the game, including the owners. They knew how wrong it really was, but nobody really said or did anything about it and the baseball community kind of just accepted it and took care of those issues internally, much like a pitcher intentionally throwing at another team's batter for an alleged baseball offense. It was only when the owners started to feel that their revenue was at stake from the fans getting fed up with the gambling that they did something about it. And make no mistake, they didn't do it exclusively for the good of the game, they did it for their own pocketbooks.