With Mike Vick still in line to be released from federal prison in July 2009, the great unknown is whether he’ll be reinstated to play NFL football at any point during the 2009 season.

There’s a vague sense that Vick will be welcomed back, and a recent endorsement from owner Arthur Blank won’t hurt in that regard.

Still, Vick has now pleaded guilty to three felonies arising from his six-year pattern of conduct, and he somehow escaped prosecution for killing dogs.

A report from the United States Department of Agriculture, recently posted at The Smoking Gun, illustrates the extent of Vick’s enterprise.  Here are some of the things that caught our eye.

Concerned about being seen attending dog fights, Vick observed the action from an upstairs room at the shed in which the fights were staged. 

In April 2007, only a couple of weeks before the dog yard was first discovered by authorities, Vick and codefendant Quanis Phillips killed a pit bull by slamming it to the ground several times.

Codefendant Purnell Peace shot and killed a dog at Vick’s direction after the dog jumped out of the ring during a fight, was put back in, and lost.

Vick purchased the property in remote Surry County, Virginia because he believed he could conceal the dogfighting operations from the public.

Most importantly, the report points out that Vick failed a polygraph exam administered on October 12, 2007 regarding whether he participated in killing dogs.  He later recanted his statement that he was not involved in killing dogs, and he admitted that he had indeed taken part in the killing of dogs.

Given the timeline, this specific incident is very significant, in our view.  By October 2007, Vick already had pleaded guilty to federal charges unrelated to the killing of dogs.  But he still faced potential criminal charges in Virginia, including multiple counts of killing dogs.

And so with Vick unable to talk his way out of the situation, which could have resulted in an extended prison stay in Virginia, he received a legal miracle of sorts when prosecutor Gerald Poindexter failed to obtain an indictment on charges that Vick killed dogs.

Little attention has been given to this arguable miscarriage of justice, and we hope that someone with a voice louder than ours will delve deeply into what precisely happened between Poindexter and the grand jury that opted to disregard Vick’s admission that he intentionally and deliberately killed dogs.

Vick also told authorities that he know of no other NFL players or pro athletes engaged in dogfighting, and he apparently passed the polygraph test on this issue.