Letters to the Editor
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Disgusted
What is sad about this case ultimately is that it is not that uncommon for seedy behavior on the part of prosecutors and police and usually those who are victims, poor defendants who can't spend millions on attorneys, never see justice.
That's what concerns me about this case. I really don't care if they punish the lying accuser or not. She obviously has some serious issues. But then her issues aren't the problem. The problem was the DA and the police who should have seen through her bs and should never have brought charges in the first place, should never have lied to the press, should never have done any of this.
Disbarrment is not enough for Nifong. He needs to be prosecuted on multiple felony counts and he needs to be put in prison for as many years as he had tried to put those three innocent players in prison. And he can have the police officers on this case for cell mates. I have ZERO TOLERANCE for corrupt cops and prosecutors. They are supposed to be freaking ENFORCING the law, not breaking it and using it as a bludgeon to put innocent people in prison. That sickens me so much I can't even put it into words. They need to be held to a higher standard, given the HUGE power they have. Prosecutors and police need to get the message that if they don't act on the straight and narrow, not only will they lose their jobs, they will lose their freedom.
This just disgusts me. If they don't prosecute Nifong (after disbarring him) and the police on this, I'll be even more disgusted. I'll be Disgusted Beyond Belief.
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This case defies easy generalizations.
The throwaway line at the end of this piece is hyperbolic bullshit. NO serious felony case should be dealt with in terms of sweeping generalizations, and this one is a superb example.
There is blame all around here--as has been mentioned, the student-athletes should not have been involved in an event that could potentially reflect so badly on their team, their university, and themselves; the university--especially the faculty who led the witch-hunt in the weeks after the allegations surfaced--should be ashamed of their craven disregard for the basic principles of American jurisprudence (I guess being tenured makes it easy to railroad people who aren't); college culture at Duke and across the country has gone off the deep end of mind-altered, sex-obsessed excess, and desperately needs to be transformed.
All of these various factors came into play in the rush to judgment against these boys, the worst of which was D.A. Nifong's cynical choice to exploit town/gown tensions in Durham and the poor judgment of a clearly troubled young woman of demonstrated dubious character to win re-election and get a taste of the national media spot-light that seems to drive purportedly 'distinguished' officers of the courts utterly insane (the worst example being Ito, Darden, and Clark in the O.J. trial; the most recent and ridiculous being that clown of a judge in the Anna Nicole Smith paternity case).
In almost any other circumstance, these charges would never have been filed. The rush to judgment occurred because of our collective, implicit suspicion that rich white boys can get away with anything. It should be remembered that, in the weeks and months leading up to the night in question, the owner-occupant residents of the neighborhood where the party took place--a racially diverse, middle-class neighborhood peppered with rental properties occupied by Duke students--had become increasingly fed up with the raucous partying and general rudeness of drunken Duke students who treated their neighborhood as if it were fraternity row and used their lawns and gardens as toilets and aluminum recycling bins, laughing merrily all the way--and into the dawn. The lacrosse party was merely the 'straw that broke the proverbial camel's back,' and these boys were essentially being lynched for fitting into a distasteful archetype. The accuser is also a victim--not of the Duke Lacrosse team, but of her own poor judgment and of a D.A. who used her for his own political gain. We should all be very grateful that Nifong's cruel exploitation of both the accuser and the accused has been exposed and that he will likely be disbarred. The cause of justice for victims of sexual violence can only be furthered by a clear demonstration of fairness in the court system--however late in coming it may be.
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To Henry Hotspur
You wrote: "I'm a little dismayed to see MizBinkley compare hiring a stripper to an arrest for drunken, abusive behavior."
Although I do consider regularly hiring strippers for college events to be bad behavior, I don't consider it to be bad behavior equal to drunken, abusive acts.
I think michael sullivan said it well in his post:
Personally, if one of those Duke adult students had been my son he'd already know the police and court system would be the least of his worries even if "all he had done" was legally get drunk and legally hire strippers.
Just wanted to clarify my thinking. I don't disagree with you.
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Actually, Anna...
In this case what's really lacking is any evidence at all that the three suspects were involved in the case. The ONLY evidence is the accused picking three pictures out of an lineup which contained only people at the party.
One of them, in fact, has an extremely solid alibi in the form of ATM card usage, and entrance into a computer-secured dorm, during the time when the assault was supposed to be going on. All three were cleared by DNA evidence which, according to the accuser's story, should have matched one of them.
There are plenty of cases (such as, in my opinion, the Kobe Bryant case) where "charges dropped" simply means, "there's no way to prove this happened, even if there's some evidence to suggest it did."
But this case isn't one of them. Do a little research - this case has been a travesty of justice for quite some time. It should be abundantly clear to anybody who's done even a little reading on this case that there's no reason to think the accused raped anyone, and quite a lot of reason to think they didn't.