Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Kraft Gets a W, Taller WRs and Belichick as DC - Locked On Patriots May 14, 2019

Episode Date: May 14, 2019

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Hey there everybody, welcome on into a Tuesday installment of the Lockdown Patriots podcast. Mark Schofield back in the big chair for today, Tuesday, May 14th, 2019. And show is coming out a little bit later. Usually I have the schedule to go up at midnight Eastern. However, the football gods, i.e. the Patriots front office, threw me a bit of a curveball. I had the tape stuff done. I had the show recorded.

I was all ready to go. And then they cut the two players I was studying. That's right. Today's show was going to be offensive lineman Calvin Anderson and wide receiver Xavier Bosi. Both were just cut as the Patriots needed to make room for wide receivers Dontrell Inman and Jared Velder. So, that means I have to change gears.

And I haven't had a chance to sort of watch both of those guys, Inman or Velder. I've had a chance to watch the next guys we're going to be talking about sort of in this tape review of the free agency class, the wide receiver Ryan Davis and the running back Nick Brissett. And so we're kind of going in a different direction. I know we've been doing this series on the new acquisitions and things like that, but can't really do it right now unless we just go a day without a show. And I don't want to do that. This is your favorite daily Patriots podcast. I don't want to leave that. This is your favorite Daily Patriots podcast.

I don't want to leave the people handed, so to speak. And so what we're going to do today, we're going to talk about a couple of different things. We're going to talk about Bill Belichick and his approach to wide receivers. We're going to talk about Bill Belichick as defensive play caller. But first, I have to put the lawyer hat back on and talk about developments

in the Robert Kraft solicitation case. But before we do anything, your usual reminder to please follow me on the Twitter machine at Mark Schofield. Check out the work at places like InsideThePylon.com, Pro Football Weekly, The Score, Matt Waldman's Rookie Scouting Portfolio, and yes, that trio of SB Nation websites, Big Blue View, Bleeding Green Nation, and yes, Pat's Pulpit. Now, let's revisit where we were when we last left off with the Affair de Craft. And I told you what was probably coming, a motion to suppress the video evidence. And I told you that there was a chance that that was going to get granted. Why? Because

of the Fourth Amendment requirement that search warrants have to be, have to particularly describe the place to be searched and the things to be seized. That is a requirement under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. And I said that there was a problem with this warrant in the sense that it didn't say anything about recording. That was probably going to be a problem. Well, we got some news. The judge threw out the tape suppressing that evidence. And he released a 12-page opinion basically saying this.

Look, under the United States law, under the Fourth Amendment, there are five requirements a court must consider before video surveillance can be permitted. The five requirements are, first, a show on the probable cause exists that a particular person is committed, has committed, or is about to commit a crime. Second, the order particularly describes

the place to be searched and the things to be seized in accordance with the Fourth Amendment. That's what we were just talking about. Third, the order is sufficiently precise as to minimize the recording of activities not related to the crimes under investigation. Fourth, the judge issuing the order finds that normal investigative procedures have been tried and have failed or reasonably appear to be unlikely to succeed if tried or appear to be too dangerous. And finally, the order does not allow the period of interception to be longer than necessary to achieve the objective of the authorization, or in any event, no longer than 30 days. Now, the judge went through these one by one. And for the most part, the judge found that the search warrant satisfied most of the prongs of that five-prong test. For example, the court found that the time limitation

on the warrant, five days unless otherwise approved by the court, was reasonable and consistent with the requirements. The court also found that the search warrant satisfied that particularity requirement. It specifically names Huizhen as being in control of the premises and further authorizes, quote, video recordings of individuals engaged in acts related to these violations, close quote. So it checked that box, although I didn't think so, but the court found that it did. The court also found that the search warrant affidavit of Detective Sharp provided a sufficient basis for the issuing judge to find probable cause to conduct the search. However, the court did find some problems with it. First, the court found that the minimization

requirement has not been satisfied in at least two respects. First, the search warrant itself is insufficient, and second, minimization techniques were not sufficiently employed. The court goes on to say, The order approved by the court in the underlying case that they cite to specifically required minimization and outlined the minimization procedures to be followed. The search warrant in this case does little to none of that. The search warrant does describe the places where cameras are to be installed, specifying no cameras are to be placed in the kitchen, bathroom, and personal bedrooms. But a spa client, whether engaged in an innocent or illegal activity, would not be likely to frequent those three areas.

The search warrant does not assert the criminal activity suspected to be occurred in those three areas. Consequently, that limitation does little to further minimization. Furthermore, the search warrant does not address how to minimize the impact of video surveillance on female spa clients. All of the assertions of illegal activity in the search warrant suggest to describe only male genital stimulation. The pre-search warrant investigation, such as reviewing websites and reviews of the spa contained therein, obtaining physical evidence, and seeing slang terms used to describe alleged illegal activities in the spa all focused on male clientele.

However, the spa advertised services for women clients and, in fact, more than one woman had a significant portion of her spa time viewed by a detective monitor and the entirety of her spa time recorded and placed in Jupiter Police Department records. Failing to consider and include instructions on minimizing the impact on women through a highly intrusive law enforcement technique in a setting with a high legitimate expectation of privacy is a serious flaw in the search warrant, especially considering that the search warrant did not allege women were seeking illegal contact. Furthermore, the court found that the search warrant also failed to include any minimization techniques or directives as to how detective monitors should respond when viewing male spa clients receiving lawful services or male clients when no probable cause can be established. This omission is also a serious flaw in the search warrant. The testimony indicates the videotapes of these individuals remain in the records of

the Jupiter Police Department. So basically you had a situation where some totally innocent men and women had their entire lawful time spent in a massage room, fully recorded, viewed intermittently by a detective, and now is in the possession of the Jupiter Police Department. So imagine that. You're just a normal, everyday, run-of-the-mill guy or girl looking for a massage because your back's a little sore. You go to this place. You get yourself the massage. You feel a little better.

You walk out, and the next day you find that, oh, that place that I went to yesterday was under video surveillance. I had some people watching me. You expect privacy in that moment, and that was violated. Listen to this part from the order. During the course of the five days of video surveillance, the detective monitors observed two circumstances that should have alerted them that illegal activity was not likely to occur during a massage, and those individuals' exposure to surveillance should have been minimized. These circumstances are those individuals, male or female, who left on their underwear and massages in rooms where lights were not dimmed. Admittedly, these clues to legitimate activity may not have been known by the detective monitors at the outset. However, these clues distinguishing legitimate and possibly illegitimate activity in the massage room

should have been recognized by the detective monitors as they conducted surveillance and the detective monitors should have responded accordingly the fact that apparently one male started with underwear on but had his underwear later removed does not excuse the greater number of surveilled and recorded innocent customers they were basically recording people that were innocent now specifically to craft immediately after defendant left the spa on january 19th of 2019, and after video surveillance captured his image in real time, he was followed by a Juniper Police Department officer who then notified another officer to stop the car in which he was a passenger. The stop and officer obtained the identification of the defendant through the stop.

Defendant's identity was not known to law enforcement until he was stopped. Therefore, all information obtained through the stop is suppressed as the fruit of an unlawful search. So basically, his identification is now suppressed. The main thing here, the court finds that the search warrant does not contain required minimization guidelines and that minimization techniques employed in this case do not satisfy constitutional requirements. Consequently, the court grants defendants motion to suppress all evidence against defendant obtained through and in connection with the search warrant. It's suppressed. What does that mean? It's out. It doesn't commit. You can't

use it. And that fruit of unlawful search, that's related to a concept in criminal law called the fruit of a poisonous tree. If you do something improper, such as an improper search warrant, improper video surveillance, and then you go on to obtain additional evidence based on that, as in this instance, where they got his identification based on then stopping him when they stopped him after the video surveillance, that identification is out because you only got it based on doing something improper to begin with. Similarly, let's say I had a search warrant or police had a search warrant to search my house and it was obtained improperly and they thought that they were going to find a bunch of illegal

drugs. And they come in with an improper search warrant looking for drugs and they find evidence of another crime, say counterfeiting bills. If the improper search warrant is thrown out, any evidence obtained while using that search warrant is what they call the fruit of a poisonous tree and it goes out also. So the drug case is out. The counterfeit bills, that's out too because the only way you found it was because you were in my house improperly to begin with. And so if you're Robert Kraft, the case against you is now pretty much gone. What happens now? Well, there will be a motion to dismiss, I am sure, filed by Kraft's lawyers, if not by the time you're listening to this podcast, then shortly thereafter. The prosecutor's office, they are exploring their options. They can appeal

this. Now, standard of review is going to be whether the judge in overturning this overstepped his bounds. Now, standard of review is a tricky thing in sort of what deference should be given to an underlying court's decision. And they mentioned it in this order that, you know, due deference is given to the magistrate judge that signs off on this warrant. As the court said, a review in court is required to give great deference to a magistrate's probable cause determination, and its function is simply to ensure that the issue and magistrate had a substantial basis for concluding the probable cause existed. Now that's part of it but not all of it then they have to look at the constitutional law requirements those were not satisfied here and as a result

the case against robert craft is probably over and again if you have been listening to the show, you probably knew that this was coming. I didn't get it exactly right in terms of how the judge would rule on this warrant, but from my reading of it, it seemed like it was deficient in some respects, and now it's gone. So Robert Kraft, because of the deficiencies in this warrant, may, for lack of a better phrase, get off on this case. That's horrible. That's horrible.

But I mean, it was an easy... Anyway, it's not a situation where the league is sort of bending over backwards. It's not an instance of the Patriots cheating. This is just an instance of perhaps if you've got access to good lawyers, you can file motions like this. The run of the mill defendant might not have access to lawyers that would do this, but Robert Kraft, because of the resources

he has, was able to do it. And so it seems like he's going to perhaps avoid these charges and avoid a criminal trial and all of it. So that's the latest on him. Up next, we're going to talk a little bit about wide receivers and a little bit about Bill Belichick as defensive coordinator. That is ahead on this Tuesday installment of Locked on Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you now on this Tuesday installment of Locked on Patriots. And I'm going to spend the rest of this show talking about Belichick in two different respects. First, I've got a fantastic question from my boy, Catra Hoggyface, who is on Twitter

at C-A-P-N-H-U-G-U-I-F-A-C-E. He and I got together for lunch a couple Fridays ago. Fantastic time. Had some pizza at a fantastic place, Giuseppe's up at Gaithersburg, Maryland. It was a fantastic lunch. Getting to spend some time with him. The pizza was incredible. So shout out to him for that and for the recommendation.

But he did ask a question via Twitter DMs. Question about the Patriots for Locked On. Why is Belichick adding taller wide receivers to the roster, which appears to be going against the grain with NFL teams targeting more quick twitch athletes? I don't follow the defensive side of the ball, but if teams employed smaller and shiftier defensive backs and leaving tall wide receivers with a size advantage,

there's got to be a reason behind this. Any thoughts? And I think to rewind it back a bit, I want to sort of mirror some of the comments that I made when the Patriots drafted Nikhil Harry, which was, in a sense, this was a pick in the mold of what can the player do now to help the team and what can the player become down the road. Because one of the things on Harry was that he's not a well-rounded wide receiver right now. Sort of a limited route tree and there's

a difficulty to separate, but maybe with some refinement and development at the wide receiver spot, he could perhaps get there he could perhaps become a better wide receiver a more well-rounded wide receiver that's sort of the what can he do down the road type of thing but how could he help the team right now and the yardage after the catch using him as an offensive weapon is one way and another way is his ability to win the football in sort of contested catch situations, to use his size, use his frame, use his body to win those Yodel Ball 50-50 throws. And I think that Belichick is looking to add receivers right now

in that sort of mold. And that leads to the question, why? Is it, like Captain Huggyface pointed out, a nod to perhaps smaller defensive backs in the league right now? Or is it something else? And I can't help but wonder, and obviously, if you've listened to the show long enough, you know that I view things through more of a quarterback-centric lens than most. If this is sort of the next step in the extension of Tom Brady's career aspect to how the Patriots are constructing their offense around him and with him. Because again, when they drafted Isaiah Wynn

and they drafted Sonny Michel, I thought that that was a set of picks made sort of with an eye towards the end of Brady's career and transitioning towards a new rookie quarterback, an offensive lineman, build it around the running game. And we saw the ability of the running game last year was able to sort of extend this team, allow this team to redefine itself. This became, it stretches a running team. You look at that division around game against the Chargers. This is a 21 personnel run the ball team. And yes. And yes, they threw it when they needed to. They were a better passing team in the playoffs than many, myself included, expected them to be. But when push came to shove, they wanted to run the ball.

And you could quibble with, do running backs matter and the run game and things like that. But it was a transition that they needed to make at that point in the season to be successful. You had Gronkowski, who wasn't himself near the end of the season. Brady was struggling at times, and so they did what they needed to do to win. And obviously, they drafted another running back, Damon Harris. They had some offensive linemen. It does seem like they're still built to be able to run the ball, and they might need to when you have questions at tight end.

You have questions at the wide receiver spots. But then when you factor in the Brady aspect of this, we saw at times last year the accuracy dipped a bit. We saw at times last year, like I said, that Buffalo game, the second Buffalo game, many, including myself, wondered, was this the kind of passing performance that instills confidence in you that this team can go out and throw it if they need to? That Tom Brady can go out and have the type of day passing the football that we've grown accustomed to seeing from them?

And there were some questions. Now, yeah, they answered them in the AFC Championship game for the most part, although Brady did have a bad interception, and thankfully, you know, Dee Ford lines up offsides. Otherwise, they would have had another interception which probably would know d ford lines up off sides otherwise they would have had another interception which probably wouldn't end that game you know but there was some great passing plays as well and yes we saw hoss white juke three times at the super bowl to win it but still there were questions about the passing game and if there is sort of a dip in Brady that we've seen,

it's perhaps ball placement and velocity, which might lead to contested catch situations. And in those type of moments, perhaps you would want receivers that are taller with bigger frames that are more contested catch type guys, they can go up and get it to be able to bail out your quarterback and that's just pure speculation on my part but if the idea here is that what have we seen from our offense overall and what do we expect our offense to perhaps be in Tom Brady's you know

42nd year on the planet and if there are areas where his game perhaps dips what can we do to balance that out what can we do to sort of make that work how can we win with this guy and if get us a bigger framed receivers to win those contested throws is the way that maybe that's what they're doing you know demarius thomas that's kind of one thing that he can do and i haven't got a chance to really dive into inman but again a bigger type receiver obviously Nikhil Hare what we talked about there and so that's sort of my off-the-cuff answer here I think this is a nod to how can we still be supremely successful as an offense given what we might see at times and given what could potentially happen with Tom Brady. Now again, look, we don't know what Tom Brady is going to look like.

He was out at UCLA. I was told that, look, he's back. He's slanted. He looks great. And if so, fantastic. But if not, you want to have some receivers that can help him. This is an offense that schematically is designed to give Tom Brady some help. Pre-snap movement, pre-snap motion, reads, and things like that. They will find ways to win, and this might be the next step towards that. Last thing I do want to touch on briefly before we go, Bill Belichick as defensive play caller. It does seem like that is going to be the approach this year. Ben Volan over at the Boston Globe says that it does seem like Belichick is going to handle the defensive play calling. Brett Blima, he's going to be sort of

just the defensive line coach, which might make some sense. You're looking at a new set of bodies, Chase Winovich, Michael Bennett. You might need to do some different things up front. You want to get the most out of these guys. Maybe you see what you finally can get out of Derek Rivers. And so let Blima sort of focus on that and let Belichick be the defensive play call, which he hasn't been in a while. What will that look like? Who knows? I think obviously Bill Belichick's imprint and influence and fingerprints have been all over this defense for the past couple of years, but it'll be interesting to see sort of how he handles defensive play calling and how that also handles and flows with the other decisions that he will have to make during the course of a

game so i'm very curious to see how that goes if you know as a defensive play caller when the defense is on the sidelines you're going to really be focused on getting with those guys, seeing what they're seeing, so you can prepare for the next series. So that might take Belichick's time away from seeing what the offense is doing. That might put more on Josh McDaniels in a sense. So it's going to be interesting to see how these guys balance all of that. But we've got a couple of weeks, we've got months to figure out how that's going to look before we even see it on the field.

So we'll be talking about that some more, I'm sure. But that will do it for today. I'll be back tomorrow, getting back to the UDFA guys. We're going to talk about Ryan Davis as well as Nick Prosset, the running back from LSU. Until next time, keep it locked right here

to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots.