Monday, June 25, 2007

Ethical Dimension

Lane Williamson at his best, noting the apparent lack of an "ethical dimension" in Mike Nifong's conduct.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do Crystal and Nifong have a romantic relationship?

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Well, they did have some kind of relationship I bet, and I don't mean romantic necessarily.
She has probably been picked up many times. It wouldn't be amazing if she was an informant of some kind because he had something over her. She may have made the perfect accuser if he thought he could control her. He certainly knew some of her relatives.
Maybe. Just a thought.

Anonymous said...

Linwood no longer with Durham DA Office! See N & O

christoph said...
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Anonymous said...

3:08 -
There's been a lot of speculation as to just who may have contributed some of the unidentified DNA, and whether that might explain some of the odd decision-making Durham and Duke offialdom have been displaying over the last few months.

christoph said...

As I recall, this comment came at a point when Freedman was hoping to assert a kind of personality theory about Nifong: if Nifong didn't perceive his own behavior as "malicious," then we shouldn't judge it so either. Rather, Nifong was "thoughtless". After all, goes the thought, a truly malicious person would have planned with more cunning than Nifong did. In response, Williamson shows so much wisdom in side-stepping presumptions about what makes Nifong tick. He does a great job naming what can be named without overreaching, misattributing Nifong's behavior, or falsely extrapolating from "normal" behavior. Williamson's comment addressed the clearest, most specific deviance in Nifong's world-view: his incapacity for ethical reasoning. Also, this is a good description of clinical psychopathy: not determined ill-will, nor heightened self-interest, but the utter lack of cognitive processing about how one's behavior affects others', nor one's own long-term, well-being.

Anonymous said...

Christoph - it astounds me that Freedman was idiotic enough, and I use that word deliberately, to think that he could get away with using this argument to lawyers who have criminal experience. This wasn't a pitch to a jury that could be swayed by emotion, but to the Bar and although it's been popular to malign their competence (as the Herald did yesterday) they've been there and done that and seen all of this many times before.

Nifong's last defense was the last defense of every sociopath and bottom feeder who's standing in the docket and has run out of excuses. "I'm not guilty, it was an accident, I'm too stupid to have figured this out, the other guy did it, it's unfair, it's not my fault, waah waah waah waah waah!!!" Does anyone really think that perps take responsibility at the end? They just about all go through the same kind of pitiful performance at the end that Nifong did it, and the vast majority of perps have made it to that point because they're morons and couldn't think their way out of a paper bag.

And Freedman tried to make this argument to the people who have seen this exact same thing 1,000 times before? What a fool!!!

christoph said...

In fact, Williamson's rebuttal referred to his experiences trying lawyers who had embezzled from their own clients, more or less knowing that they would get caught too. Williamson seemed completely at ease with the inscrutability of perps' motives.
So the criminals who CAN think their way out of a paper bag...what do they do, plea bargain?

Anonymous said...

Re: Criminals who CAN think their way out of a paper bag, Case in point - Sandy Berger. Voluntarily surrendered his license and settled everything amicably behind the scenes rather than allow any kind of public hearing into what should have been a felony charge with 10 years minimum sentence. For you non-legal types, surrendering your license means that the Bar loses all jurisdiction to even hold hearings until and unless you reapply in a few years, and by then it will probably all have blown over.

Now why everyone was so happy to let him do that - just makes you wonder what else he knew, and why it was worth letting him walk to keep that part quiet.

mac said...

"Ethical dimension?"
Hmmm.
Gosh, Nifey WAS acting in the ethical dimension of the 88
(subtract the one who apologized, add Claire Potter) and
in the ethical dimension of the DPD and Durhh and
Brodhead and Wendy Murphy and Nancy Grace and and and...

In their "ethical dimension," they
all approve of the actions of Nifong,
and they continue to do so - unbelievably.

Metaphorically speaking:
they claim to honor the prophets,
but they testify that they are the
children of those who killed them,
and thus approve of the murders of
the prophets.

Hard for them to proclaim - or even murmur -
their support of civil rights.