Witness for the Prosecution? New York Times still victimizing innocent Dukies.

Imagine you are the world's most powerful newspaper and you have invested your credibility in yet another story line that is falling apart, crumbling as inexorably as Jayson Blair's fabrications and the flawed reporting on Saddam Hussein's supposed WMD. What to do?

If you're the New York Times and the story is the alleged gang rape of a black woman by three white Duke lacrosse players—a claim shown by mounting evidence to be almost certainly fraudulent—you tone down your rhetoric while doing your utmost to prop up a case that's been almost wholly driven by prosecutorial and police misconduct.

And by bad journalism. Worse, perhaps, than the other recent Times embarrassments. The Times still seems bent on advancing its race-sex-class ideological agenda, even at the cost of ruining the lives of three young men who it has reason to know are very probably innocent. This at a time when many other true believers in the rape charge, such as feminist law professor Susan Estrich, have at last seen through the prosecution's fog of lies and distortions. Click Here!

The Times took its stand in a 5,600-word, Page One reassessment of the case on Aug. 25, written by Duff Wilson, a sportswriter responsible for much of the paper's previous one-sided coverage, and Jonathan Glater. The headline was "Files From Duke Rape Case Give Details But No Answers."

Like the headline, the piece cultivates a meretricious appearance of balance. But its flaws are so glaring that it was shredded by bloggers within hours after it hit my doorstep. They were led by a Durham group called Liestoppers and by KC Johnson, an obscure but brilliant New York City history professor of centrist political views. Johnson alone has produced more insightful analysis on the Duke case—about 60,000 words—than all the nation's newspapers combined.

DNA evidence seems to be allowed to clear Karr and everyone else in the world except the Duke 3.

They somehow gang-raped and struggled with a woman in a tiny room (into which they somehow all fit) and yet none of them left any DNA in her, on her, or even in the room.

The woman is maybe bi-polar and has said she was gang-raped before, when three men dragged her into a house. She has said her ex-husband tried to drag her into the woods to kill her.

She said about this case that five men plus her fellow dancer dragged her into the bathroom (which fits two people); then that someone called Brett and the other dancer tried to rape her; or twenty white men; or Adam, Matt, and Brett; and finally she picked four likely assailants after 6 photo ID sessions (which were run
so bizarrely as to almost surely disqualify them from
ever being used in court.)

There is no other evidence than her accusations.

Two of the accused have absolute alibis--with witnesses,
documents, and photos. (Pres. Bush couldn't get a better
alibi than that.)

Yet still this case goes on. Why?

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