How would the photo line ups be done? She kept picking people.
If she didn't want to go forward, what exactly kept her from saying she couldn't recognize anyone?
I agree. Crystal could have stopped this at any time by just refusing to ID anyone. Instead she picked out three people whose lives are now in turmoil.
I blame Nifong more because he is clearly the driving force behind this. And of course he is a DA and is supposed to seek justice. I don't think Crystal intended for this to blow up into the national spectacle it became. I think she made the charges to get out of a bad situation and never intended to follow up on them as she has in the past. But she had a big moment of truth at that final line-up and she failed miserably as a human being.
She picked bunches of people in the first couple line-ups in numbers that didn't comport with her final version of the story of 3 guys gang-raping her, or she picked people who could not have possibly been there which means she had never seen them before, and before that she gave descriptions that didn't fit any of the players she eventually did pick. That points to a person who didn't want to make a viable identification in my book. If you finally settle on saying 3 guys did it, and you pick 20, then next time you pick 12, then 15, or then 4, to me it looks like you're being pressured to pick someone, but you can't, so you just pick a bunch to meet the pressure but in such a way that the choices are not useful.
The photo line-ups did not meet the state criminal justice system's protocols in any way, shape or form, and probably did not meet USSC case law precedent which requires that the photos and the presentation not be unduly suggestive or biased, which these clearly were.