How did Patriots owner Robert Kraft win appeal in Florida prostitution case?

Charles Robinson and Terez Paylor have the latest on the Robert Kraft case covered on the Yahoo NFL Podcast. Will the NFL still go after Kraft?

Video Transcript

CHARLES ROBINSON: Get yourself a good lawyer, as I have said before. In all the years of my working, I have realized that good lawyers, if you're in any kind of real trouble, pay for themselves.

Robert Kraft has now had one judge and then a panel of three judges agree with his lawyer's opinion that the surveillance inside the Orchids of Asia Day Spa, where he is accused of committing a couple misdemeanors, of soliciting prostitution, that that video was basically improper, because you know what? It just rolled, and it rolled, and it rolled.

TEREZ PAYLOR: I don't know. I'm just saying, maybe if he was just Jack from Hoboken, maybe that wouldn't be the case. Just, I don't know. Just a hunch.

CHARLES ROBINSON: So there's a lawyer out there that-- he's already put together a class of at least 31 individuals who were on this tape that didn't do anything. Showed up to get massages, showed up to just do normal, everyday stuff. So they're on this tape in, as he termed it, different series of undress to get massages.

And he compared it to someone putting a camera in a bathroom and taping people in the bathroom without their knowledge. And frankly, sitting there and thinking of it from a lawyer perspective, thinking of it from the perspective of myself, if I just went in there to get-- like, hey, I'm going to go in and get a sports massage or a Swedish massage, whatever--

TEREZ PAYLOR: Oh yeah, I'd be pissed, too.

CHARLES ROBINSON: I'd be pissed! For the NFL at this point to hold Robert Kraft responsible under the personal conduct policy-- first off, his statement, if you go back and look at the statement, he didn't really admit to anything. He didn't admit to anything. He just said he was sorry. He basically apologized for the Chargers existing, kind of being in this situation. But he didn't actually cop responsibility to anything.

So you don't really have a confession. Now you don't have any tape evidence. And frankly, even if you went and got that tape evidence, because of how these judges have ruled, it might be illegal. If you're the NFL in this situation, would you even ask Robert Kraft to sit for an interview?

TEREZ PAYLOR: I don't know if they could. I think it's fascinating, in the sense that I think the league is moving away a little bit from, you embarrassed us, we're punishing you. Tyreek Hill didn't get a punishment at all, and that was an embarrassing thing for the league. So that kind of struck me as a pivot away from, you embarrassed us. [BLEEP] you. You're talking the L.

And if they're going to go that way, that makes it a lot easier for them to, with Robert Kraft, just not punish him. Which, I'm sure Roger Goodell would prefer to do. This is one of his bosses, OK?

Let's be very real about this. The team owners run the show. He reports to those guys. Roger Goodell gets paid $40 million to be a human shield for these cats. So the standards between punishing the players and punishing the owner is going to be different, because he reports to one side, and he rules over the other, or at least legislates the other. That is what it is there, man.

CHARLES ROBINSON: An element I want to add here in terms of how this case changed-- so when this all came out in February 2019, it had sex trafficking attached to it. It had all these other things.

TEREZ PAYLOR: Oh, yeah.

CHARLES ROBINSON: Well, guess what? In the long run, what we figured out is, no, actually, the spot that he was in was not tied to sex trafficking. And in fact, the workers inside, in as far as anything that the authorities have been able to determine, were entertaining of their own volition. They were essentially like, hey. They were deciding that, I'm doing this, this is my profession.

And I want to also add that it's America. And frankly, whether you want to believe it or not, there are parts of America where sex work is actually not illegal. If you've gone to Las Vegas, it's not far from Las Vegas that sex work is actually essentially legalized prostitution.

So you can say what you want. You can feel how you want about it. I understand that. But what this amounts to, by the letter of the law, is a couple of misdemeanors. And it's a couple of misdemeanors that he's paid his lawyers well to beat the living hell out of them at this stage.

And I just don't know if the NFL-- I think you laid it out best when you said, look what happened with Tyreek Hill. There have actually been other instances where there were some embarrassing things that have happened in the league, and there has not been action. I tend to agree with you. I think the league is getting away from legislating every single thing that doesn't look great.

And particularly as it concerns an owner, if he beats all the charges, and he goes on a winning streak in the court system, and the court system eventually says, you know what, man, the prosecutors just go, no more. We're done. Which is what I think is going to happen.

TEREZ PAYLOR: Because then they've got the political pressure against him. They've got these private lawyers.

CHARLES ROBINSON: Well, how many times are you going to lose? that's the thing.

TEREZ PAYLOR: Np, exactly. You're just going to keep taking L's like that? No, man.

- Yahoo Fantasy Cram Session, Thursday, August 27, at 7:00 Eastern, 4:00 Pacific.