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I pointed out that the cabby is black to point out the irony of the situation.

In order to get 40% of the Democrat vote in Durham to keep his job, Nifong obviously pandered to African-Americans.

Now that the job is firmly in place... he turns his pattern of prosecutorial misconduct turns to a person of color.

That's Irony.

If your point is that the DA is trying to intimidate a witness are you saying that he would not have done so if the guy were white?

I'm ok with this FWIW. Remember that the south in general, and certainly, as we have read here as related to this case, Durham, still is very conscious of race. There is still an undercurrent of the bad old days when blacks better do as they're told, especially by a police officer or official, whether it seems to be on the level or not.

I agree that the State AG needs to do something here. As somebody wrote on the other thread, this prosecution is long past the point where it looks like something out of Nigeria or Haiti.

I think the race of the cabbie is relevent to the story. Yeah, the DA would probably have done the same thing if the cabbie were white, but a lot of the reason for the zealous pursuit of the players is obviously because he's playing for black votes.

I think the critical point here is that the DA is not a fearless defender of the downtrodden minority, as he's trying to paint himself, but someone who has no problem destroying these same minorities through intimidation tactics. A lot of the resentment by blacks of the system is because of exactly these type of cheap intimidation tactics.

BTW, a lot of colleges, particularly rich private colleges, are in the same situation as Duke. They've been established for maybe over 100 years, and the formerly pristine neighborhoods of their location are now occupied by black and hispanic populations. I know of a couple of these schools where the campus police primarily cruise the outer perimeters of the campus, making sure the "locals" aren't coming onto campus to break into cars, dorms, classrooms, etc. Yes, there are people who come on campus specifically to do that, but when enough law abiding citizens get stopped and questioned because they drove or walked across the campus to get somewhere, a significant amount of resentment builds up. When you add the fact that a lot of the kids at these colleges are rich and pretty dumb about life outside of the gated community, it's a volatile situation. Don't be surprised to see more of these "college vs. the local neighborhood" battles take place.