Highlighting Comments

Two excellent comments from yesterday’s thread that deserve more attention:

Gustafson’s comments are important. Not only to the Professors of the left prejudge the students, they also prejudge the source of the outrage of the alums while also revealing shocking ignorance about important legal trends. I am a Duke graduate (as it my brother and other members of my family). Long before this case arose, as an attorney I was well aware of the difficulties of the legal system and the mistreatment of multiple defendants. Despite being a white corporate lawyer,I volunteered my time to assist many minority defendants who I believed had been mistreated or overcharged. In my own state of Illinois, we had an epidemic of prosecutorial and police misconduct that resulted both in the conviction of the innocent and, by definition, the failure to find and incarcerate the. As in North Carolina, (Project Innocence) all walks of society worked to remedy these issues and the prosecutors are far more open to consideration of error.

Just today, for example, an inmate incarcerated in 1992 is having his case re-opened because of a DNA match.

So, when those of us who (as lawyers and law professors) apply these well known and decade old issues to an obvious misjudgment to have profoundly ignorant and unqualified English professors examine the issues through their “rubric” of gender and race it is laughable.

The prejudice is assuming that people who are upset and outraged by Nifong’s treatment never cared about these issues before, never thought about these issues before, and only care because they are lacrosse players is a window into their own limited mind.

In my own case, I brought no predisposition to the matter. I know full well that the Duke Campus, as with all campuses nationally, has some people capable of criminal acts and that alcohol abuse is a serious issue at Duke and elsewhere. Anyone who has studied and worked in the legal system knows full well what is happening based on no more than Nifong’s own statements.

So, to those people who claim that the outrage is a lens into the prejudice of the people upset at the treatment of the lacrosse players, you could not be more wrong.

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The second comment:

One humorous aspect of the Hoax -- if such a train wreck could be seen as funny -- is the studied indifference of the Hoax’s enablers to D.A. Nifong’s narrative. Recall, he claims that the three rapists were aided by three additional lacrosse team members, who pulled apart the alleged victim and exotic dancer Kim Roberts, hustling Roberts into a bedroom so that the rapists could attend to the A.V. in the bathroom.

Thus, if the rape happened, there are three unindicted co-conspirators at large. Who are they? Why haven’t they been arrested? Did yet other teammates enable their actions?

The Group of 88 and their fellow-travelers have no interest in this issue. Of course: bringing up the unindicted three players only highlights the absurdity of the felony charges as an account of events that actually transpired, rather than as a signifier of resentments based on class, race, and social status.

Yet this side issue shows that evaluating the quality of police work becomes impossible once law enforcement becomes the standard-bearer for Social-Justice-based vengefulness. If this were a real case, there would be tremendous (and justified) pressure to indict the Other Three. Once we accept that this is kabuki, there’s no need for additional witches to try--Seligmann, Evans, and Finnerty will do.

How many other cases has the DPD “cleared” as ably as they have solved the Lacrosse Rape? Not a question I would be comfortable asking if I was a Durham resident.