According to a recent article by Stuart Taylor Jr. AND K C Johnson. “last spring, Durham D.A. Michael Nifong, who is white, was facing a primary in a racially divided electorate. He was badly behind and out of campaign money, excepting almost $30,000 in loans from his personal funds. Then came the accuser's allegations. Mr. Nifong responded by assuming control of the police investigation and making racially inflammatory statements pronouncing the Duke lacrosse players guilty of rape. Even as evidence of their innocence accumulated, he brought rape, sexual assault and kidnapping charges that fed the racial resentments he had stoked. The black vote put him over the top in both the May 2 primary and the Nov. 7 general election.”
Thus, seemed to begin, the sordid saga of the “Duke Lacrosse Rape case.”
Even though the rape allegations have been known to be clearly false for months, since none of the accused’s DNA was found on the victim, the case still had its fair share of supporters nationwide.
As Johnson and Taylor ask and answer, “How can we be confident that the charges are false?
“Let us count the ways: The police who interviewed the accuser after she left the March 13-14 lacrosse team party where she and another woman had performed as strippers found her rape charge incredible, and for good reason. She said nothing about rape to three cops and two others during the first 90 minutes after the party. Only when being involuntarily confined in a mental health facility did she mention rape. This predictably got her released to the Duke emergency room for a rape workup, whereupon she recanted the rape charge.
Then she re-recanted, offering a ludicrous parade of wildly implausible and mutually contradictory stories of being gang-raped by 20, five, four, three or two lacrosse players, with the other stripper assisting the rapists in some versions.”
Moreover, they added, “Above all, DNA tests by state and private labs, which Mr. Nifong's office had said would "immediately rule out any innocent persons," did just that. They found no lacrosse player's DNA anywhere on or in the accuser and none of her DNA in the bathroom.”
Despite all this, it was less than ten days ago that the rape charges were dropped only AFTER Defense lawyers were able to show that Nifong’s office illegally kept the private lab used in this case, from unveiling the complete DNA findings – that the DNA of “multiple males” were present on the alleged victim, although NONE of that DNA matched any of the Duke Lacrosse players.
K C Johnson and Stuart Taylor, Jr. put Mike Nifong’s predicament into a very clear perspective, “But Mr. Nifong had driven the black community into a rage with dozens of guilt-presuming, race-baiting attacks on the lacrosse players like this one, on March 27: "The contempt that was shown for the victim, based on her race, was totally abhorrent."
“Such statements flagrantly violated North Carolina ethical rules requiring prosecutors to "refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused." They also poured gasoline on the flames of racial rage.”
And they go on to lay out how flawed, the illegal photo-line up of 4/4/06 really was, “On April 4, when this third photo-ID process took place, the message to the accuser was, effectively: Pick three, any three. At random, if you like. You can't go wrong. This setup trashed the defendants' constitutional due process rights and specific Durham, state, and federal principles for identification procedures. To test the reliability of often-mistaken eyewitness ID's, these principles require showing at least five "fillers" (non-suspects) with each suspect and telling the witness that the lineup may or may not include a suspect.
“Mr. Nifong recently defended his procedure through word games, asking, "What is a lineup?" "
The entire case, replete with outrageous “race & classed based politics,” through statements like, “White innocence means black guilt. Men’s innocence means women’s guilt,” by Karla Holloway (Duke University Professor), has been a travesty of modern American jurisprudence and another in the long indictment of the twisted Leftist tradition that has grown like a weed in contemporary American academia, the media and the law.
As Johnson and Taylor make painfully clear, the real harm done by the supporters of Mike Nifong’s illicit use of a troubled woman’s racially inflammatory accusations for his own political gain, is that they have tacitly endorsed the abuse of the legal process in pursuit of “desired ends,” a course that inevitable leads to such abuses becoming even more routinely used against poorer and less well connected suspects.
The entire article by K C Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr. can be read here:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009444
Trackback to K C Johnson’s awesome blog on the Duke case:
http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/
Trackback to Lashawn Barber, a great blogger on this topic;
http://lashawnbarber.com/archives/2006/12/27/mike-nifong-will-drop-all-charges/trackback/
Thus, seemed to begin, the sordid saga of the “Duke Lacrosse Rape case.”
Even though the rape allegations have been known to be clearly false for months, since none of the accused’s DNA was found on the victim, the case still had its fair share of supporters nationwide.
As Johnson and Taylor ask and answer, “How can we be confident that the charges are false?
“Let us count the ways: The police who interviewed the accuser after she left the March 13-14 lacrosse team party where she and another woman had performed as strippers found her rape charge incredible, and for good reason. She said nothing about rape to three cops and two others during the first 90 minutes after the party. Only when being involuntarily confined in a mental health facility did she mention rape. This predictably got her released to the Duke emergency room for a rape workup, whereupon she recanted the rape charge.
Then she re-recanted, offering a ludicrous parade of wildly implausible and mutually contradictory stories of being gang-raped by 20, five, four, three or two lacrosse players, with the other stripper assisting the rapists in some versions.”
Moreover, they added, “Above all, DNA tests by state and private labs, which Mr. Nifong's office had said would "immediately rule out any innocent persons," did just that. They found no lacrosse player's DNA anywhere on or in the accuser and none of her DNA in the bathroom.”
Despite all this, it was less than ten days ago that the rape charges were dropped only AFTER Defense lawyers were able to show that Nifong’s office illegally kept the private lab used in this case, from unveiling the complete DNA findings – that the DNA of “multiple males” were present on the alleged victim, although NONE of that DNA matched any of the Duke Lacrosse players.
K C Johnson and Stuart Taylor, Jr. put Mike Nifong’s predicament into a very clear perspective, “But Mr. Nifong had driven the black community into a rage with dozens of guilt-presuming, race-baiting attacks on the lacrosse players like this one, on March 27: "The contempt that was shown for the victim, based on her race, was totally abhorrent."
“Such statements flagrantly violated North Carolina ethical rules requiring prosecutors to "refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused." They also poured gasoline on the flames of racial rage.”
And they go on to lay out how flawed, the illegal photo-line up of 4/4/06 really was, “On April 4, when this third photo-ID process took place, the message to the accuser was, effectively: Pick three, any three. At random, if you like. You can't go wrong. This setup trashed the defendants' constitutional due process rights and specific Durham, state, and federal principles for identification procedures. To test the reliability of often-mistaken eyewitness ID's, these principles require showing at least five "fillers" (non-suspects) with each suspect and telling the witness that the lineup may or may not include a suspect.
“Mr. Nifong recently defended his procedure through word games, asking, "What is a lineup?" "
The entire case, replete with outrageous “race & classed based politics,” through statements like, “White innocence means black guilt. Men’s innocence means women’s guilt,” by Karla Holloway (Duke University Professor), has been a travesty of modern American jurisprudence and another in the long indictment of the twisted Leftist tradition that has grown like a weed in contemporary American academia, the media and the law.
As Johnson and Taylor make painfully clear, the real harm done by the supporters of Mike Nifong’s illicit use of a troubled woman’s racially inflammatory accusations for his own political gain, is that they have tacitly endorsed the abuse of the legal process in pursuit of “desired ends,” a course that inevitable leads to such abuses becoming even more routinely used against poorer and less well connected suspects.
The entire article by K C Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr. can be read here:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009444
Trackback to K C Johnson’s awesome blog on the Duke case:
http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/
Trackback to Lashawn Barber, a great blogger on this topic;
http://lashawnbarber.com/archives/2006/12/27/mike-nifong-will-drop-all-charges/trackback/
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UPDATE: 12/28/2006: North Carolina Bar Files Ethics Charges Against Nifong:
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"The North Carolina bar filed ethics charges Thursday against the prosecutor in the Duke lacrosse case, accusing him of saying misleading or inflammatory things to the news media about the athletes under suspicion.
"The punishment for ethics violations can range from admonishment to disbarment."
Apparently these ethics charges stem from Nifong's statements like, "The contempt that was shown for the victim, based on her race, was totally abhorrent."
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Another of the ethics charges stems from Nifong's statements that may violate statutes that forbid "dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation." The NCBA said that when DNA testing failed to find any evidence that any of the Duke lacrosse players raped the accuser, Nifong told a reporter that the players may have used a condom, despite his having received a report from an emergency room nurse in which the accuser said her attackers did not use a condom.
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Could that be the smell of disbarment in the air?
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