Thursday, January 04, 2007
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Consequences of the Duke Lacrosse Case That Don't Really Worry the Liberals Who Rushed to Judgment
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Posted by:
Mary Katharine Ham at
8:41 AM
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Betsy Newmark:
Everyone, including those activists, should be concerned about the precedents that Nifong has set and the civil liberties of future defendants. If Nifong can twist procedure and lie to the court about evidence in a case with so much publicity, what might be happening in the cases that are not so high profile with defendants who can’t afford expensive lawyers?
That a prosecutor could carry on a baseless case for what seems like political reasons exposes a need for more checks on local prosecutors. Will the next woman in this community who comes forward to say that she was brutally attacked have a harder time persuading authorities and getting public sympathy because of the lies of one striptease dancer and one district attorney who wanted to get reelected? These are results of this case that should worry all of us.
Betsy says, if charges are dropped, the refrain will be "fake but accurate" once again. Sure, the lacrosse players didn't actually rape anyone, but the storyline revealed a larger truth about racism at Duke. Or, something like that.
She's right, of course. Finnerty and Seligmann will only be truly forgiven in Durham if they hop into the white guilt drum circle for aggressive self-flagellation with the rest of the city. They'll be asked not to sue anyone and to, instead, join in the healing process, which consists of talking ad nauseum about the "larger truths" their non-crime revealed-- none of which, by the way, will have anything to do with the fact that Durham is a little race-obsessed P.C. haven where the white and privileged and innocent were sold out instantly just for the community feelgood effect.
They'll be asked to look in the mirror and say, "Sure, you didn't rape that woman, and were dragged through the mud by everyone in town, but let's think about what the idea of your raping a black woman told us about race and gender in Durham."
Over at the News and Observer, a local columnist isn't sorry about her rush to judgment. No, really, she's not sorry at all. She put it in writing.
A friend of mine sent me this website today, dedicated to the accuser's "struggle". Until recently, the site had been dedicated to the posting of messages such as this:
Dear Sister Survivor:
If there wasn't major substance to these allegations they would have been dismissed long ago. I admire you for your courage to speak out against those three arrogant losers. Continue to stand in truth and righteousness and GOD will undoubtly exercise vengeance on them.
Their bigoted and wicked defense lawyers as well as...alumni don't understand who is really in control of the three's... future, but those of us of great faith know who is in control of the outcome of this case. GOD is in control and He is the Sovereign Ruler of this universe and nothing happens outside of His control. What I am telling you sister is don't be dismayed by the wicked tactics of the defense attorneys and by ...alumni, because the battle is the Lord's and He says vengeance belongs unto Him and He will repay, and it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living GOD of the universe. HEBREWS 10:30:31
But here's the latest message from the administrator of the site:
D.A. Mike Nifong has indicated that a lack of evidence, beyond the accuser's latest admission that she cannot testify "with certainty" about her claim of rape, forced him to move to dismiss those charges against the three Duke lacrosse players indicted.
Nifong has indicated, however, that he will pursue the remaining first-degree kidnapping and first degree sexual offense charges in this case against the defendants.
Pending what happens with those charges, and ultimately this case, a decision will be made as to the future of this website. The previous messages that have been posted will remain for now.
Maybe the website can be the center of the healing process, led by Mike Nifong!
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An Open Letter to Michael Nifong
by William L. Anderson
Hello, Mike. Had I written this open letter last summer, I doubt you would have heard of me, but my sources in Durham (and they are good sources, Mike) tell me that I pretty much am on your enemies list. I’m glad I could accomplish that feat, but from what I can tell, that list is getting longer while we speak.
However, in this letter, I come to you in peace. I’m offering you advice, good advice, I might add, and if I were you, I would take it. Don’t get me wrong. I really hope that you not only lose your law license and your job, but since you were trying to take away the lives of three young men who had committed no crimes, I do hope that you have the opportunity to do a stretch in prison, or at least have to face that horrifying prospect. After all, there are people in this country who belong behind bars, and you are one of them.
But even though I want you to go to prison, I am going to offer you advice that I think very well not only could keep you out of what Lew Rockwell calls the crowbar motel, but also could save your career. Think about that, Mike. I am trying to help you keep your law license, your freedom, and maybe even your job, so you need to listen to me.
The first and most important thing is that you need to drop the kidnapping and sexual assault charges against Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty, and David Evans. I mean drop the charges the way that Duke University receivers drop passes at crucial times during a close football game. Those charges need to disappear, and fast, for if you insist on pushing them forward, it only will get worse for you.
As I give you this advice, let me caution you not to listen to people like Wendy Murphy. She has been on television championing your cause, and wrote this abomination of an op-ed for USA Today that declared your dropping the rape charges, but keeping the others, to be a "brilliant move." Trust me, Mike; you don’t want Murphy being your only cheerleader, for I can give you a list of law-abiding and respectable people who would refuse to spit on her grave only because they hate standing in long lines.
No, listen to me. Dropping those charges leads to my second point. For the past nine months, you have been telling the world you had a great case. Last spring, while reading something by your political allies, I saw where you had a "mountain of physical evidence" that pointed toward those three men having committed what the black journalist Cash Michaels called a "brutal rape."
As you know, that mountain never was on your side; it was on the other side. My guess is that you had that figured out the minute you spoke to Brian Meehan of the DNA lab last April (before you secured the indictments against Reade and Collin), as he gave you the bad news that the only thing DNA was going to do would be to further discredit Crystal and, by definition, your case.
That is when you made your biggest mistake. You lied, and then tried to cover the lie, and when you were caught, you gave a litany of excuses that rivals anything John Belushi would have given in one of his movies. Despite Murphy’s contention that you simply were trying to protect the "privacy" of the unindicted lacrosse players, reason tells the rest of us that you were not too worried about protecting people whom you publicly had labeled "hooligans" and "rapists."
Mike, I can assure you that Judge W. Osmond Smith III was not taken in by your various excuses that range from "I didn’t know" to "the dog ate my homework" to "no harm, no foul." Maybe another judge might have looked the other way before this case became The Story nationally. When the Los Angeles Times is writing editorials calling for your head on a platter, you have to understand that this no longer is a Durham case. It is a national case, and you cannot stuff that thing back into your little jurisdiction.
Thus, literally everything you bring into that courtroom on February 5 is going to undergo scrutiny from every news outlet and every legal analyst in the country, not to mention overseas. Believe me, that is not something you want to happen, as the outright dishonesty of your "evidence" is going to be hung out for the world to see. It is one thing for that to happen in the current arena dominated by writers and talking heads, where nothing official has happened.
However, once you put this dreck before a judge, and the court gets to see exactly what your "evidence" really is, you are going to be in much more trouble than you are now. At this moment, you still are guilty only of "bad judgment." If you walk into that courtroom with your witness in tow, your "investigators," and your "medical evidence" (or, better put, your medical non-evidence), at that point you are going to be seen as the D.A. who has perpetrated a fraud. At that point, Mike, you will have openly committed a crime for which will make you vulnerable to spending time in the crowbar motel. That is fraud, Mike, and I am using that term in the legal sense.
There is a way out. You can go to the courthouse today – right now, I urge you – and make the following declaration:
I am announcing today that I have dropped all charges against Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty, and David Evans. There will be no further charges, and no more investigations of the alleged events that occurred on March 13 and 14, 2006.
At the time the accuser made the charges, my conversations with police officers led me to believe there had been a rape and sexual assault of the woman in question. As a prosecutor, I was duty-bound to investigate and the information that police gave me was of the type that required me to pursue this case and seek the indictments.
However, after further examination of the charges, I no longer can conclude that they are credible, and if I am not sure myself of the credibility of the accusations, by law I cannot further pursue this matter in a court of law. From the start, I have made it clear that this office takes rape allegations seriously, and we will investigate those allegations.
I do regret any actions I took which might have appeared to be overzealous, but at no time did I act against the letter or spirit of the law. While I take responsibility for mistakes that I might have made during this episode, let me assure all of you that those mistakes were made in the pursuit of what I thought was a just course of action.
Granted, about everything I have written for you is a lie, but since you already have lied repeatedly as an officer of the court, one more lie won’t hurt you, especially since it will have been told in the course of your ending this legal fraud. After all, you did not make the initial rape allegations; it was a woman with a history of drug abuse, prostitution, and mental problems (she was hospitalized in 2005 for those). She was trying to keep from being involuntarily committed to a mental institution when she made the charges, and that hardly was your fault.
But if you drop the charges with the above declaration, you have something you can bring to the representatives of the North Carolina Bar Association, who already have summoned you to appear before an investigative body. You can claim you were trying to make sure that a possible rape victim who is black and poor would receive justice. You can claim you were overzealous, but sincere in your actions.
(You might even try to repeat some of the acting talent you showed when you demonstrated on national television the alleged choke hold that the accused put on the woman. You sure were convincing when the cameras were on you.)
If the members of the legal cartel – I mean, your fellow attorneys of this august body – act within their usual scope of things, you might just get off with a reprimand, provided you have not tried to bring a lying accuser, lying police officers, and anyone else who would be torn apart by defense attorney, into a court of law. If you go that far, you can bet that the authorities will have no choice but to throw you to the wolves.
Remember, there are prosecutors in North Carolina who tried to get someone executed, even though they had exculpatory evidence in their possession (which they failed to give to the defense of Alan Gell). They got off with bare reprimands, and both of them are gainfully employed in the law. You might want to speak to David Hoke and Debra Graves about how to grovel in front of the Bar Association investigative committee, so that you, too, can get your free get-out-of-jail card.
Above all, Mike the key is dropping these charges now. Take my advice, please. I may not like you, but I believe that it would be best for everyone involved if you were to punt, including you. If you refuse to take my advice and continue this fraud, then people who have some authority over you are going to dismiss the charges, and then they will deal with you. Mike, you have an opportunity to see that this humiliating experience does not happen, and I recommend that you take the proper course of action today.
December 29, 2006
William L. Anderson, Ph.D. [send him mail], teaches economics at Frostburg State University in Maryland, and is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com
http://www.lewrockwell.com/anderson/anderson161.html |
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I think the real problem and one I agree with from the main post is that people tend to use stories like this to justify their own prejudices rather than wait and see what really happened.
I have very serious concerns about the lacross case. When the prosecutors and the police blatently violate best practices and legal safeguards, the only lesson we can draw is that our civil liberties are in danger. This case thus says far more about the dangers of an overreaching executive than it does about race or gender relations at Duke or elsewhere, though it might say something about *perceptions* or race relations which is another matter.
I bring up the issue of perceptions becuase it is entirely possible that the law enforcement and prosecuting organizations were cought up in such a perception which may or may not be accurate. In other words, it says less about what the Lacross players think of women or ethnic minorities as it does about what the police think the Lacross players think. Hence it also warns about the cause of the day being used to dispense with appropriate legal protections. |
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If there is a real problem that this situation points out, it is with the gullibility of the US people. Besides this case consider the Tom Delay case (two grand juries refused to indict, but a third one did), the Scooter Libby indictment, and maybe even the indictments of Hillary and Bill. Why do we continue to believe these pronouncements which are made by untrustworthy politicians who are also lawyers which we distrust aided and abetted by the news media (an, even less trustworthy profession).
A quote credited to a former Chief Judge of New York State (who was disbarred) is "A grand jury would indict a ham sandwich." Nifong's indictment of the players is a good example of this, as are those by the other prosecutors. The solution will be when the public becomes skeptical and quits buying the rags that publish the hogwash being reported by glory-seeking publicity hounds.
All this being said, I then conclude that we have the worst judicial system in the world, EXCEPT FOR ALL OF THE REST. The system has tons of inequities, but I still will take my chances here before I go to any other country or even the International Court and am tried under their system. |
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If you check the hearts website or whatever else it is you will get sick. It has got some stuff there that would make even Rod McKuen blush, and that ain't easy!
btw - it didn't happen
not unlike Tawana Bradley
Why do I (and I suspect others) have a singular lack of respect for what is laughingly called "the black community"? |
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Our legal system isn't perfect, but it is the only one we have and we have to make it work to the best of it's ability. But when all the powers that be that are involved in the Duke rape case pervert the legal system for their own ends is in-itself a perversion of the very legal system that either protects or prosecutes.
District attorney Nifong used this case for political gain, the accusers by all accounts thought they were going to have their fifteen minutes of fame and fortune.
The civil rights organizations thought they were going to use the white lacrosse players as their whipping boys to propagandize that the Klan is alive and well in the South with rich white college students.
National and local media were pushing this story hard and fast before any of the facts or evidence was sorted out. Basically the Duke players were convicted by the media, who in-turn was being manipulated by Nifong because the media is too lazy to investigate their sources.
The leadership at Duke University had joined with the media in convicting these students and throwing the key away and is now back peddling furiously and allowing the students to return to class.
The only one that didn't have a political, self-enrichment, race baiting scheme is this country's legal system. This is what lost out on this travesty of justice. Those who are entrusted by the public to protect and prosecute those who are responsible for crimes to law abiding citizens used the legal system as if were toilet paper to be soiled and then flushed to the toilet.
District Attorney Nifong is not alone in his quest for political gain, he just received the media attention, but what about those innocent men who are sitting in jail or have a criminal record against them, because someone made allegations, and didn't have the resources to higher decent legal counsel and in the end cop a plea with the local District Attorney just to get the ordeal over with. Meanwhile the District Attorney adds another scalp to his or her war belt.
It happens all the time of those manipulating the legal system for personal gain or obtain vengeance for a false crime.
Don't think that it can't happen to you, all someone has to do is go to the magistrate's office lodge a complaint go home and watch your life become a living hell.
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should be required to be printed on yellow paper.
The N&O is not a "newspaper" in any proper sense of the word. The opinions start on page one, above the fold, and pervade the entire paper. It is every bit as liberal, though far less erudite and subtle, than the "Rag of Record" (NYT). |
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Good first step MH. But have you read the column about Berger? Berger's a "nice guy", people are nice to him at cocktail parties. People are nice to Nifong at cocktail parties. People are nice to the Duke Lynch Mob at cocktail parties. People are nice to the Bigot who pronounced Divine Judgement (erroneously--a quick study of the Prophets reveals God HATES "bought"[in this case bought by PC] or prejudiced justice.) on innocent people. And because people are constantly being nice to them (at cocktail parties and then everywhere else) Berger is not made to tell the truth, and the Rape of the Duke White Boys goes on unabaited. Gee, MH--you tumbled to the "healing" scam in a jif. Being nice at cocktail parties is just a variation on the theme. As King said: "justice delayed is justice denied"--at cocktail parties or anywhere else. The demand that the evil doers cease their evil MUST be prosecuted every moment of every day, the demand that the Duke Bigots confess, and atone for their bigotry must be prosecuted every moment of every day--at cocktail parties and everywhere else. "No truce with kings", no peace with tyrants, zero tolerance for the minions of evil, 24/7/365. Not one (insert acceptable expletive of your choice)"nice" or "polite" word for one of them, not ever.
the big mick |
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...used in that manner.
God is the ultimate arbiter of justice, on this earth and in the next life Instead of praying for God to make a lie true (simply b/c the accuser is black, the accused are white and the person praying for "justice" is a black woman), a true Christian would pray for justice to be done, in this life or the next.
Hiding racism behind the veneer of spirituality is an afront to God. |
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