The suspension of star NFL running back Ray Rice has been overturned in an arbitration proceeding.

The New York Times and other news outlets are reporting that an arbitrator found that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell acted arbitrarily in banning Rice indefinitely — after initially giving him a comparative slap on the wrist — for viciously assaulting Janay Palmer, his then-fiancée and now-wife.

When news of the assault first broke, and after New Jersey law-enforcement authorities declined to prosecute Rice, Commissioner Goodell imposed a light penalty — a two-game ban along with a $500,000 fine. That decision was so widely rebuked, the league quickly conceded error, rationalized that it had not formulated standards at the time of Rice’s offense. The NFL committed to treat future domestic violence incidents more harshly, announcing that a suspension of least six games would be imposed for a first offense.

After that, however, a videotape of the assault was released publicly. It graphically depicts Rice knocking Ms. Palmer unconscious with a punch before dragging her out of an Atlantic City hotel elevator. Immediately, public criticism of league’s wrist-slap intensified. (See my September 13 column, here.) An embarrassed Goodell responded by imposing the indefinite ban, and Rice’s team, the Baltimore Ravens, severed ties with the player.

This has not quelled media and public complaints about the erratic handling of the matter by Goodell, who insists that he did not see the video of the assault before imposing the original two-week suspension — or, indeed, prior to its publication on an internet site.

The NFL has commenced an internal investigation into its handling of the video, which appears to have been in the possession of at least one league official before Goodell first suspended Rice. That investigation is being headed by former FBI director Bob Mueller and is expected to assess the credibility Goodell’s claim not to have seen the video.

Meanwhile, Goodell also contended that Rice had downplayed the severity of the assault when he met with the commissioner and other league officials prior to his initial suspension. That contention was vigorously disputed by Rice and his lawyers. In the decision publicized on Friday, the arbitrator, former federal judge Barbara S. Jones, found that Rice had neither lied to nor misled the NFL. Rather, according to ESPN, which obtained a copy of the decision, Judge Jones explained,

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.

Judge Jones, I am proud to say, was my first chief when I was a young prosecutor in the mid-eighties — U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani had tapped her to run the Organized Crime Unit, and she was pivotal to the office’s historic dismantling of the mafia. A great investigator, she was also a top official in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and a highly regarded federal judge.

Her arbitration decision appears to rely on double jeopardy principles. She concluded that the commissioner abused his discretion by imposing a second and far more severe penalty under circumstances where all relevant facts were known to the league at the time of the first, light suspension.

Double jeopardy is a criminal-law doctrine. Its application in a contractual dispute between two private parties — the NFL and the NFL Players Association (which took Rice’s side) — would depend on the terms of the agreement and whatever latitude it gives an arbitrator to resort to such doctrines as double jeopardy in restricting the commissioner’s discretion in disciplining player violations.

In my own view, for what little it may be worth, if the league could have imposed an indefinite suspension in the first instance, it should be able to impose an indefinite suspension now. The fact that the commissioner mishandled the matter should not erase the facts that the indefinite suspension was appropriate and that the league — which depends on public support — must be able to respond to public opinion.

All that said, though, (a) I am not familiar with the terms of the collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and the NFLPA; and (b) the league certainly seems to have argued the case as if it believed double jeopardy principles governed: The NFL’s story was that the light suspension should be overlooked because Rice duped the league into imposing it, not because the league had the power to impose a subsequent, heavier suspension regardless of any earlier action it had taken.

As already noted, Rice was cut by the Ravens after the videotape became public. He has filed a grievance against the team for terminating his contract. That matter has not yet been resolved, and the reports do not make clear whether the Ravens would consider reinstating Rice. Otherwise, it appears that Rice is now free to play for any team willing to sign him.