Ryan Lochte has been charged with falsely reporting a crime by Brazilian authorities.
Everyone knows the story, and Ryan has admitted exaggerating the facts. But return to a country that sees criminal justice as a means to extort money from people?
I’m thinking Brazil needs to go pound sand while Ryan vows to never again go south of the equator. Do they have any leverage over Lochte?
Well, not really. Knox denied having committed the offence with which she was charged, but I don’t think there’s any dispute - certainly not from Lochte - that Lochte did give partial and misleading accounts of the incident. I don’t know whether he gave misleading accounts to the police; presumably that will be the issue in any trial of these charges. But any comparison with Amanda Knox looks like a bit of a stretch, and on any view Lochte has already stretched the truth here quite far enough.
Except the incident has seriously damaged his brand value. Is there any chance of recovery, and perhaps re-acquiring some endorsement contracts? And would a return to Brazil aid in that?
Only if the meter maid sticks a gun in your ribs and demands you pay the fine right there.
It’s really not that much of a stretch to call what happened to Lochte a robbery. Yes, he was wrong, and the proper thing to do would have been to offer to pay to fix what he destroyed. But someone sticking a gun in your side and demanding money sort of fits the definition of a robbery. Then, their criminal justice system “negotiating” a fine so you can avoid jail time… Third world all the way.
Not to mention pissing on a gas station and knocking down some shitty sign are not comparable to murder.
Not to mention the other guy had to pay $11k to get his passport back.
Basically 4 dumb jocks acting like overage frat guys ran afoul of some corrupt Brazilian security guards / police and created an international incident.
What I don’t understand is:
a) why people aren’t more outraged at Brazilian cops extorting money from the Olympic athletes
b) why Lockte didn’t respond with something like "yeah, we were a little drunk and acting like jerks, but we don’t speak the language or understand their culture and may have misinterpreted the situation.
If it’s as you say, then why did they lie? As the phrase goes, it’s not the crime but the cover-up. And I don’t see the $11,000 negotiated settlement as extortion. The guy was, presumably, well-represented and this was presumably the best settlement possible.
All in all this is not the sort of crime that I think people, in general, should be extradited for. But if Brazil goes ahead and tries him in absentia, and the court hands down a fine as a punishment, I think ethically that Lochte should pay it.
a) this is pretty typical of internet lynch mobs. The mob forms around a story which exemplifies their pre-existing gripes. It has to be simple. Not necessarily the same mobs, not even for different stages of the same story. A small mob was forming at first (believing Lochte’s story word for word) about ‘corrupt third world countries’. Then a larger mob formed about ‘ugly Americans’ (‘entitled jocks’, ‘entitled white men’, etc) when the Brazilians claimed Lochte’s story was ‘made up’. The latter, still current mob is not interested in the ‘nuance’ that Lochte’s original story seems actually pretty far from entirely ‘made up’, and the Brazilian authorities either lied or publicized lies without investigating them (eg that the bathroom was broken into and vandalized, that’s apparently made up). Not surprising to me.
b) He could have handled all kinds of better ways going back to the beginning.
Now, from what I read, Lochte is allowed under Brazilian law to have a local lawyer represent him without personally returning, for a relatively minor offence like this. It just reduces his/lawyer’s scope to appeal/negotiate the sentence/fine. The question is probably going to become whether he really has to pay a fine they come up with. He’s obviously not going to go back and serve a jail sentence, any possibility of which is also the reason it would be basically crazy for him to return personally. If they fine him a lot more than the ‘donation’ coerced out of Feigen and he refuses to pay, they could never get that money assuming he never wants to go back there. The issue would be the general PR fallout, and specially with USOC/swim team assuming he still wants to be in their good graces or thinks he ever could be again.
He didn’t “exaggerate the facts” he completely changed the facts around to make himself the victim instead of the culpable party. He’s already lost millions in endorsements, at this point whatever the Brazilian authorities manage to deservedly milk out of him seems worth it just to make the story go away.
My understanding is that there was no vandalism aside from ripping a poster off the wall (I’m not counting peeing on an exterior wall ‘vandalism’ – that’s a separate offense). There was no bathroom trashing or anything like that.
…
This is one of the hard things about forming a credible opinion on this matter – the information had changed a ton over the course of about 8 days, and not everyone followed on from beginning to end.
…if you want the freedom to travel to other countries then you agree to abide with the local laws and customs. If Lochte had done this in Singapore not only would he probably have ended up in jail he would also have been given several lashes of the cane as well.
The United States is an exponent of extraordinary rendition: described by the UN as an “unambiguous violation of international law.” Before you start lecturing other nations and telling them to “pound sand” I think you should take care of your own backyard first. Stop disproportionately incarcerating people of colour. Stop putting more people in jail (per capita) than literally ever where else in the world. Stop executing people. Bring your justice system into the 21st century.