He'd be much better off with a hung jury than with a conviction. If a conviction gets overturned on appeal, Nifong will be forced to admit that he never had a valid case (since the overturning court will basically say the case was not valid). If Nifong gets a hung jury and declines to retry the case, he can claim that at least some jurors thought there was a sound case, and there will be no way the defendants can appeal the hung jury and get a judicial declaration that there should have been a directed verdict.
(From a post at Talk Left :
"I sometimes wonder if this incessant drumbeat of victimhood isn't damaging as much to those who are subjected to it, as to the rest of society.
"To regurgitate Shelby Steele ("White Guilt : How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era"), every failure in the black community must now be treated as a result of injustice on the part of whites; and the remedy to everything--
poor educational results, poor jobs, drugs, gangs, etc.
--is simply for whites to do more to end this injustice. The responsibility for ending any problem thus lies with the white community; they are the ones who must take some kind of action.
The idea that blacks must assume any responsibility for any aspect of their own problems must be rejected, because otherwise blacks would no longer be victims, and the whole culture ethos of modern black society would fall apart.
(Hence there are demands for example in education, not for parental involvement, for studying hard ('too white'), educational skill development, and relentless and repeated practice;
but instead for ebonics, multiculturalism, culturally 'inclusive' classes, advanced placement, simpilfied exams, and 'adjusted' standards. The responsibility for action lies with white society, and there is nothing the black community can do to rescue themselves absent this action.)
And thus, just as no woman ever lies about rape (a world-view would be destroyed if ANY woman could be admitted to lie about sexual assault)
so too any black woman who accuses a white man of rape must become not a potential crime victim, but a symbol of the entire ethos of modern black culture--white oppression; and the 'rape' (if it occured at all) must not be treated as a crime, but as primarily a political act of oppression.
So the players have to be guilty. Just as the nazi world-view would not (could not, lest it deconstruct) admit the possibility of the innocence of any Jew, so too the modern ethos of the AA community cannot admit the possibility that a black woman's accusation against any young white male athlete could not be true.
And that is the atmosphere (a carbon-copy of the 1930s) in which it is insisted that this trial take place--which will not be an impartial rendering of the facts, so much as an act of political theater in which once again black victimhood is exhibited before all the world, in order to justify the victimhood concept yet once again.
(Change of venue, anyone?)