Collectors (PSA) Acquired SGC

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Fair criticism. I'm obviously talking out my ass on all things legal matters. What is a fair spread of reasons as to why a prosecutor might choose not to bring a case for this? You've mentioned before that the evidence might just not be admissible, but would assume they'd have known that from the outset, yet they still chose to pursue it, at least initially. Without having a crystal ball, what other reasons could you see for them cutting bait?

Are prosecutors in cases like this concerned about their "win rates" in court? Could that possibly come into play? Could he have perhaps felt that despite having ample evidence of sports card hanky panky having occurred, he was afraid he was likely to still lose the case because a jury just wasn't likely to see it the same way and he didn't want to risk taking a "Loss"?

A few points.

Yes, generally, prosecutors want to bring cases they think have a very strong chance of winning or forcing a guilty plea. It's certainly possible that here, the judgment in the end was that the case might not play well to a jury, although just speculating I think it's more likely that evidentiary issues were more of a factor particularly after the star witness went south. But of course I don't know.

As to whether this could have been all foretold in advance, not necessarily. Brian would have known all along he couldn't make a case from BODA threads under the rules of evidence, but especially after Brent initially cooperated, he may have thought he could build a case based principally on testimony, especially if other witnesses chose to cooperate rather than face the prospect of Brent testifying against them. Or it could have been worth going forward just to get the then-expected guilty plea from Brent. And it's possible other things did not go as expected that would not have been known from the outset.

Or it's possible that due to the pandemic, etc. the case just moved down and out in terms of importance and resource allocation.

But I highly doubt any prosecutor made a judgment that doctoring cards and selling them without disclosure by the mails or wires could not be a crime in the first place.