http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/18407
Scripps News
Nifong Should Face Prosecution
(Editorial)
It had all the makings of a boffo case. Rich, white, arrogant jocks from a prestigious Southern college hire strippers for their drinking party and gang-rape a poor, black, single mother, holding her against her will in a bathroom.
The case drew national headlines, spurred a debate about privilege and race, led Duke University to ax its lacrosse coach and program, and propelled District Attorney Mike Nifong to re-election, after he had appeared to be losing to a woman whom he had once fired.
Nifong's good political fortune, however, seems to have come at the expense of justice. He now stands accused of gross prosecutorial misconduct. The North Carolina State Bar has announced it has found reasonable cause to refer him to its Disciplinary Hearing Commission for trial; he could be disbarred. And the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys called on Nifong to recuse himself from the case.
But as well as quitting the case, he should resign, and face criminal prosecution.
After dragging three students through the mud for months, Nifong dropped rape charges last month, when the alleged victim said she was no longer certain she had been raped. He was still proceeding with kidnapping and sexual-assault charges.
Meanwhile, the head of a DNA laboratory testified under oath last month that he and Nifong knew back in April that there was no DNA evidence from the lacrosse men on the woman who accused them. And there was DNA of several other men in her underwear and in intimate areas of her body.
Even though they knew that, they agreed to keep it a secret from the public _ and from the defense. In May, Nifong signed a statement saying the prosecution "is not aware of any additional material or information which may be exculpatory in nature." The law requires him to turn over such evidence, and such a statement could expose him to charges of perjury.
There's more. In disregard of standard practice, he presented the alleged victim with a lineup that included only Duke lacrosse players. She seemed an unreliable witness in many ways, telling different stories. And the DA seemed uninterested in evidence strongly suggesting that the accused could not have committed the alleged crime.
Nifong told the media that he believed the alleged assault was racially motivated, and he called the accused students "hooligans," in apparent violation of the state Code of Professional Responsibility, which requires prosecutors to "refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused." It seems clear he made such statements to swing enough votes to win his election.
Prosecutorial misconduct strikes at the heart of our criminal-justice system, destroying public trust and subjecting innocent people to the abuse of the state. In cases of rape, such misconduct could have horrific consequences, in making it harder for women who are genuine victims of these crimes of violence to come forward and put predators behind bars.
Justice demands that the rights of the innocent be protected. It is an encouraging statement about our system that now Nifong will be required to defend his actions. Let's hope that sterner steps follow, sending a message to headline-grabbing prosecutors.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-lafs...l-_b_38202.html
Melissa Lafsky
01.09.2007
Media Completes Its Full 180 On Duke Rape Case (4 comments )
Newsweek has an exclusive interview this week with Reade Seligmann, one of the three Duke lacrosse players embroiled in the much-rehashed rape case. It's a tear-jerker of a piece, with tales of dashed innocence, traumatized siblings and parents stretched to near breaking points after their son was identified by a North Carolina stripper as one of her attackers.
We learn that the exiled Seligmann, still an undergraduate, has been permitted to finish his acedemic semester at home, where he's since made the athletic-conference honor roll, volunteered at a soup kitchen and coached football at his old junior high school. To deal with the stress and depression of the scandal, Seligmann, who was reportedly recognized and offered good wishes by one of the soup kitchen's homeless patrons, turns to Kipling poems and close friendships with his fellow accuseds (Collin Finnerty and Dave Evans) for solace, and plans to eventually channel the experience into a career as a criminal defense lawyer.
While journalist Susannah Meadows is careful not to make proclamations of innocence, the sympathetic profile represents a full 180-degree turn from the fire-and-brimstone declarations that dominated the scandal's early coverage. The story, which broke last April, led to a cannonade of anger over the alleged rape of a low-income black woman by three privileged white men in a town known for heavy class and race disparities. Public furor grew as witnesses recounted racist expletives hurled at the women by Duke students, and the subsequent resignation of the school's lacrosse coach and cancellation of the lacrosse season only deepened cries of outrage. The New York Times in partcular was charged with pushing an anti-Duke agenda, with articles highlighting the university's fears over its sullied reputation and columns asking hedged questions like "What happens when a school sells its soul for sports?"
Gradually, the pendulum began to swing back as reports of lack of evidence, botched investigations and prosecutorial and police misconduct hit the airwaves. Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong came under fire as his self-declared air-tight case against the three men crumbled into a soupy quagmire of inept investigations and shaky-to-nonexistent evidence. Times columnist David Brooks, who initially grabbed a pitchfork in the anti-frat-boy charge, was offering mea culpas by the end of May, and in August the Times ran a 5,600-word front page reassessment of the case. The story was quickly shredded by angry bloggers and other writers crying foul over the Times' supposed bias against the students.
October brought further redemption for the defendants in the form of Ed Bradley's "60 Minutes" interview. The three were now described in terms like "honor student" and "one of most talented young players on the team," and given the opportunity to defend themselves on national TV. While the piece didn't lay out much evidence not already covered in the Times' Page One story, it emphasized the fact that a question now existed as to whether a rape had ever occurred. Legal analysts declared the interview a "great idea," and speculated that it may even lead to all charges being dropped.
Three months later the tide has officially turned, with reports of Finnerty and Seligmann being invited back to campus and given the chance to rejoin the lacrosse team while they await trial. Meanwhile the accuser has given birth to a baby (not sired by any of the defendants), and had her credibility heavily eroded. Reports that the rape (but not the kidnapping or sexual assault ) charges had been dropped led to bizarre debates over the definition of "penetration" as necessary for rape in North Carolina, with journalists rushing to specify that penetration of the accuser's vagina by a penis, rather than a mere object such as a broom handle, was the fact at issue.
Now, MSNBC legal analyst Susan Filan asks "What's left to say in the Duke rape case?" (plenty, apparently, given that the piece is almost 2,000 words). In addition to her lamentations over the failure of the justice system, there's much to be said about the media's role in manipulating the scandal, from the early rush to cover Nifong's guilty-before-proven-innocent speeches to broadcasting photos of the victim on MSNBC and a North Carolina NBC affiliate to subsequent calls for the D.A.'s head on a platter. It's clear that early judgments were based on incorrect or inaccurate information, and that these students have been potentially maligned and their futures damaged by the court of media and public opinion. Still, Filan's calling them potential "poster boys for justice" and "icon[s] for our criminal justice system" seems somewhat premature given that there case has yet to be heard by a judge. While plenty has been terribly wrong with the investigation, prosecution and coverage of the alleged incident at Duke, as law professor Susan Estrich, who reported on the case for Fox News, noted, "[n]one of this means the woman is lying." As with all criminal cases, the burden of proof lies firmly, and beyond a reasonable doubt, on the state. While the media is obviously not so constrained, it behooves us all to use reasonable care in making wide proclamations of guilt - or innocence.