Detroit Lions team president Rod Wood said Saturday that his team followed the law when it came to how it approached the hiring process for first-year head coach Matt Patricia earlier this year, even if that meant not uncovering a 22-year-old aggravated sexual assault indictment that has since come to light.
"We always err on the side of hiring a firm who understands all the laws, follows them, state and federal," Wood told ESPN on Saturday. "So that we don't happen upon something that we're not entitled to have nor would we would be able to use."
In this case, it meant following both federal law and the state laws of Massachusetts and Michigan. The Fair Credit Reporting Act does not allow felony arrests that did not result in convictions beyond 7 years old to be considered in possible employment so most search firms do not include that information on the background checks they provide to employers -- and that includes the Lions.
Wood declined to say what firm the team used for the background check other than to say "they are a well-regarded, national professional background screening company." He also said he was unaware of APG Security, the firm the Detroit News reported this week had requested the indictment and dismissal forms from the Cameron County prosecutor's office in January. Wood said the Lions had not employed that firm for their background check.
Wood knows there are other ways for information like this to be found -- it is publicly available in Nexis searches and on the Cameron County open records website -- but for employment purposes it could not be considered anyway. And Wood said his franchise wanted to follow the law.
"There might be ways for companies, teams in our case, to find information out about a prospective employee through other means than the legal means," Wood said. "I guess if others wanted to do that, that's their prerogative. I'm only in charge of what the Lions do and I want to do it the right way."
Additionally, because the Lions were following both Massachusetts and Michigan law, they were not allowed to ask Patricia about any felony or misdemeanor arrests that didn't lead to convictions. By Michigan law, they could have asked about felony arrests, although Ann Arbor, Michigan-based employment attorney Nicholas Roumel told ESPN he wouldn't advise companies to ask about arrests that didn't result in convictions
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/...d-says-team-followed-law-matt-patricia-hiring
