Ray Rice may not have the court of public opinion on his side, but he is clearly being backed up by the law, as the ex-Baltimore Raven has just won his appeal to overturn the indefinite suspension he received from NFL Commissioner Rodger Goodell after footage of him knocking out his wife in an elevator went public.

Rice's whole argument is that he was already punished for the incident, receiving a 2-game suspension, before the second and more damaging video went public courtesy of TMZ. His double jeopardy argument was strong enough to get U.S. District Judge Barbara S. Jones on his side, saying "Rice did not mislead the Commissioner at the June 16th meeting and therefore, that the imposition of a second suspension based on the same incident and the same known facts about the incident, was arbitrary."

She continued, "The Commissioner needed to be fair and consistent in his imposition of discipline. Moreover, any failure on the part of the League to understand the level of violence was not due to Rice's description of the event but to the inadequacy of words to convey the seriousness of domestic violence. That the League did not realize the severity of the conduct without a visual record also speaks to their admitted failure in the past to sanction this type of conduct more severely."

While he is free to play in the NFL again, Rice is now without a team, and it's likely that most teams would view it as too risky a move to invite the former Raven on board.

See pics of Ray Rice above. Do you believe the judge was correct to overturn his suspension? Sound off below.

Source: TMZ