(NEW YORK) — Green Bay Packers running back Josh Jacobs was convicted of misdemeanor battery on Thursday after reaching a plea agreement on charges stemming from an altercation in May with his girlfriend.
Jacobs pleaded no contest to battery and criminal damage to property, both misdemeanors, during his first court appearance in Brown County, Wisconsin, after being charged last month.
Brown County Circuit Court Judge Marc Hammer found him guilty of battery and sentenced him to a $1,000 fine. The judge also approved the terms of a deferred judgment agreement reached on the property damage charge. The terms include that, over the next 12 months, he avoids contact with the victim and completes a counseling or treatment course consistent with a batterer’s intervention program.
Each charge carried a potential maximum of a nine-month jail sentence and $10,000 fine.
“I fully understand the seriousness of the situation and I take full responsibility,” Jacobs told the court ahead of his conviction and sentence.
According to the probable cause statement in the criminal complaint, officers responded to a “disturbance” between Jacobs and his girlfriend at his residence in Hobart on May 23.
The victim told police that she threw Jacobs’ phone after seeing he was talking to other women, and after giving him her phone to look through, the two got into a “physical struggle” after she tried to get her phone back. When she later tried to leave, he “grabbed her and threw her to the ground and she struck her head,” the complaint stated. Jacobs was seen in surveillance video appearing to damage her phone during the incident, according to the complaint.
During Thursday’s hearing, Jacobs confirmed that the account in the probable cause statement is accurate. He is due in court on the matter a year from now, at which point the property damage count will be dismissed if he is found to have followed the conditions of his deferred judgment agreement.
“I think that what I’m hearing today is you recognize the serious nature of these events, you’ve resolved to ensure that these events don’t happen again, that these are out of your character, and I think the community has a right to satisfy itself that what you’re telling me today in the courtroom is exactly how you’re going to behave out in the community,” Hammer said while issuing the sentence.
Brown County District Attorney David Lasee said the case was not charged as a domestic violence case because the state’s domestic violence law requires that a person be involved in a domestic relationship, and Jacobs and the victim did not live together.
“Nonetheless, violence against women, specifically violence that occurs within the context of an intimate partner relationship, it can’t be tolerated,” Lasee said in court Thursday. “This is certainly a serious offense. It has many of the dynamics of an intimate partner violence case in terms of potentially controlling behavior, the use of his physical size during a physical disturbance that resulted in the crime victim being injured.”
Lasee said Jacobs is “taking responsibility for his actions in this case” and that the conditions of the deferred judgment agreement are “put in place with the intent of allowing him to reflect on those character flaws and to make changes to improve himself.”
Lasee argued against any jail sentence and said a fine of $1,000 is “sufficient.”
“For a person in Mr. Jacobs’ position, a person of prominence within the community, criminal conviction itself — the fact that he now will carry around with him for the rest of his life a conviction for misdemeanor battery — is punitive,” he said.
“He’s already seeing some of those consequences as he’s been suspended by the NFL temporarily,” he added.
One of Jacobs’ defense attorneys, David Chesnoff, thanked the district attorney’s office for a “fair resolution of this matter,” and issued an apology to the Packers.
“We would like to sincerely apologize to his teammates, the Packers organization, and most importantly, the fans of the Green Bay Packers,” Chesnoff told the court.
The NFL placed Jacobs on the commissioner’s exempt list, which prevents him from practicing or playing in games, in the wake of him being charged late last month.
On Thursday, an NFL spokesperson said there is no change to his status and Jacobs remains on the commissioner’s exempt list.
“We have been closely monitoring all developments in the matter which remains under review of the personal conduct policy,” NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy said in a statement.
The Packers are scheduled to open their regular season on Sunday against the Vikings in Minneapolis.
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