At a time when it has been important -- but impossible -- to understand the context of communications occurring from Dolphins guard Richie Incognito to Dolphins tackle Jonathan Martin, lawyer David Cornwell has provided some important context to Martin’s “I will murder your whole f--king family” text message.
"[P]eople don’t know how John and I communicate to one another,” Incognito told Jay Glazer of FOX Sports. “For instance, the week before this went down, Jonathan Martin text me on my phone ‘I will murder your whole effing family’ Now did I think Jonathan Martin would murder my family? Not one bit. . . . He texted me that. I didn’t think he was going to kill my family. I knew it was coming from a brother, I knew it was coming from a friend, I knew it was coming from a teammate. That just puts in context of how we communicate with one another.”
Cornwell has posted on Twitter, without much explanation, what he claims to be the text message in question.
Despite Incognito’s characterization, it’s not a message that Martin typed with his fingers and/or thumbs. Instead, he forwarded a photo of a woman holding a deranged-looking dog, with the “I will murder your whole f--king family” embedded in the photo as a caption. The image originally was posted at 9gag.com.
It paints a much different picture than Martin and Incognito trying to outdo each other with over-the-top messages that were typed up and sent in jest. And if that’s the best Incognito can do when trying to characterize Martin as an equal participant in their “band of brothers” banter, maybe Martin really wasn’t participating.