Comments and analysis about the Duke/Nifong case (2006-2014).
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52 comments:
If only NC CLE credits were good in Virginia, this looks to be one of the better CLE offerings that I've seen.
Another important and long lasting result of the revelations of the Duke case. That is to say, a really good reason not to let the blog wither.
If journalism is the first draft of history, and books such as UPI are the second draft, perhaps continuing legal education courses like this one are the next step in the institutionalization of our judgment of Mike Nifong. At this rate he will be appearing in 3rd grade lesson plans by next fall (having just missed the window for this school year).
"If only NC CLE credits were good in Virginia, this looks to be one of the better CLE offerings that I've seen."
-----
Did you check? Reciprocity for CLE is pretty liberally allowed.
Durham judges ought to be required to attend.
"Powerhouse"??? Where are Joe Cheshire and Wade Smith?
It appears the State Bar is in need of a CCI-styled initiative.
How in the world could any panel relating to the hoax not include Victoria Peterson?
When is the blog supposed to close?
JLS says...,
This look to me like another example of a problem in the NC legal system. I personally think it is a BAD idea for the guy who acted a judge and trier of fact in NC Bar v. Nifong to be gaining publicity or income from his decision.
In fact the NC Bar probably should require that all members of ethics panels agree not to profit off their positions at least for some period of time after the hearing. I can promise you Nifong and some of his acolytes will claim this panel shows that lacrosse player attorneys, Duke University, the witnesses at the bar hearing and the "Judge" at the bar hearing all conspired against Mike Nifong so they could profit off of finding him guilty.
What, no Irving Joyner on the panel?
I guess they don't need an enabler opinion.
Diesel
KC = No copies of the book at Barnes and Noble here in Las Vegas. They will order. I told them "If I have to order, I will get it from Amazon." Which I did today - Sent our two Harvard trained lawyers one each. The first chapter is great and looking forward to the rest of the book. I will check with Borders tomorrow.
I second the call to include some apologists for Nifong.
They have not suffered enough!!!
""Powerhouse"??? Where are Joe Cheshire and Wade Smith?"
I totally agree!
I love you, Joe Cheshire!
No Brad Bannon? No Joe Cheshire? No Wade Smith? No Professor Coleman?
Suggestion: They should take any and all profits from the book and establish a law scholarship in memory of Kirk Osbourne. What could possibly be more fitting?
KC,
Have you seen Jeffrey Rosen's review in this coming Sunday's NYT Book Review? I get the Wednesday preview via email and got a link to the full review. It's very positive. (So much for the conspiracy theories about the NYT...)
It's behind their "select" wall, but for those who can access it, it's here.
Lawyer Lane Williamson if "Perry Mason, Clarance Darrow and Melvin Belli in one large body.
AF said...
No Brad Bannon? No Joe Cheshire? No Wade Smith? No Professor Coleman?
Suggestion: They should take any and all profits from the book and establish a law scholarship in memory of Kirk Osbourne. What could possibly be more fitting?
9/12/07 6:48 PM
Agreed but limit the scholarship to lacrosse players :)
RRH
Btw, I agree with the earlier poster who said that Lane Williamson should not be on the panel, due to his special role in the case. I winced when I first saw his name there. It's entirely unseemly.
What's interesting is that the preview link right after the UPI review is one to a discussion about the role of the "canon" in the humanities in light of Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind" turning 20. Seems relevant to the Duke case, I'd say.
As a longtime former participant on the New York Times political and opinion fora, I wouldn't think for a second of giving them $50/year just to be able to argue with other people.
Maureen Dowd has always been a favorite of mine...even though she is a bit too left of center. I enjoy her op-eds and she is the only thing I miss on their op-ed page.
However, anyone can find their columns, if your interest is high enough, in any of your local newspapers.
Let's see......I have been insulted in the past by being compared to both William F. Buckley and Maureen Dowd.
The Diva must be doing something right!
LIS!!!
"I can promise you Nifong and some of his acolytes will claim this panel shows that lacrosse player attorneys, Duke University, the witnesses at the bar hearing and the "Judge" at the bar hearing all conspired against Mike Nifong so they could profit off of finding him guilty."
So what? Nifong and anyone who believes anything he says at this point are beyond hope. What, should all scientists who acknowledge that the world is indeed round agree to forfeit fees from any professional talk they give in which they describe the world as round, all so that those few mentally feeble souls who stubbornly cling to belief in a flat earth can't accuse them of being paid off by agents of the "globularist heresy"? News flash: People that nutty will believe what they want to believe and avoiding any action which they can twist into "evidence" is pointless because they will then just pull their "evidence" out of thin air. Witness the lunatic we had here recently who asserted with absolutely no evidence that Attorney General Roy Cooper had been paid off to find the players innocent. I suppose in this sterling citizen's mind, either Roy Cooper did the entire investigation single-handed, or meant to say that Roy Cooper ''and'' every single one of the investigators under him, who could have exposed him to the media if he'd twisted the data they collected for him, had been paid off. I don't ordinarily like to speculate about the race, class, sex, et cetera of anyone based on their thinking, but a lot of these "payoff" theories are so far-fetched they have to come from someone who has no conception of money except as something that they never have enough of, and the "privileged" folks have an infinite supply of.
Well Debrah, I wouldn't pay them $50 either. If you have an edu email address, you can now get behind their select wall for free.
Steven Horwitz returns from a temporary sabbatical silence and @ 7:20 PM writes:
"(So much for the conspiracy theories about the NYT...)"
Steve, could you expand on those conspiracy theories for us? I think I might have been at practice or an away game the day that was discussed.
Surely you're not referring to the frequent incredulity that KC has expressed regarding the NYT's biased, agenda-driven coverage of the Duke lacrosse incident, are you?
Please elaborate ... thank you!
One Spook
Steven Horwitz wrote: "KC,
Have you seen Jeffrey Rosen's review in this coming Sunday's NYT Book Review? I get the Wednesday preview via email and got a link to the full review. It's very positive. (So much for the conspiracy theories about the NYT...)
It's behind their "select" wall, but for those who can access it, it's here."
Is it sure to run in the NYT on Sunday or is it only available on line to subscribers?
JLS says...,
re: anon 7:53
Triers of fact should not have a financial or personal interest in the outcome of a case. I am a pretty free market guy, but I certainly think a case can be made for a 100% tax on the profits any witness, judge or juror receives from book, speeches and appearances etc on the case.
Anon 857: It will be in the Sunday NYT Book Review print edition.
One Spook: I was being too subtle in my sarcasm. What I was referring to was that some around here thought the NYT would give it to either a lightweight or a clearly hostile person to review so that they could smash it, supposedly to line up with their biases in the case itself. After all, (sarcasm on) we all know that the NYT couldn't possibly say anything good about KC or bad about the PC types at Duke (sarcasm off).
Nothing more than that - your spy radar over-reacted.
In the interest of public good, can someone post the NYT book review?
K.C
Is there any possibility that you might be interested in assigning someone to continue this blog while you are in Israel?
It would be a shame to lose the momentum you started and documented in UPI.
I'm confident that one of your regular contributors would be both willing and capable of carrying on in a manner that would make you proud.
Wishful thinking or a possibility?
Eh, my attempts at clarification were not good. To be clear: I completely agree that the NYT's coverage of the case was abysmal, biased, and shameful. But there's no way they were gonna not give the review to a serious, thoughtful person. Anyone who expected the review of the book to line up with the biases of the newsroom is seeing conspiracies where biases and stupidity will suffice to explain Duff et. al..
Well at the risk of receiving the wrath of the NYT, I will commit an act of civil disobedience in protest of the stupid freaking select wall and the paper's coverage of the case.
The complete review:
Wrongly Accused
By JEFFREY ROSEN
Published: September 16, 2007
From the Scottsboro Boys to Clarence Gideon, some of the most memorable legal narratives have been tales of the wrongly accused. Now “Until Proven Innocent,” a new book about the false allegations of rape against three Duke lacrosse players, can join these galvanizing cautionary tales. We know how the story ended: the attorney general of North Carolina dismissed all charges against the lacrosse players, declaring them completely innocent, and he denounced Michael Nifong, the district attorney who brought the case, as a “rogue prosecutor.” Nifong was not only disbarred and disgraced; his name has become a synonym for gross prosecutorial abuse. To be “Nifonged” now means to be railroaded.
In their riveting narrative, Stuart Taylor Jr., one of America’s most insightful legal commentators (and a former reporter at The New York Times), and KC Johnson, a history professor at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York, portray Nifong as “evil or deluded or both.” They call him a “race-baiting demagogue” who tried to fan racial hatred against innocent white students (and lock them up for 30 years) in order to win black votes in his re-election campaign. Soon after an African-American stripper claimed she had been gang-raped at a Duke lacrosse party, the authors charge, Nifong should have known that the woman he called “my victim” was lying. She made the claim of rape only when threatened with confinement in a mental health center. She then recanted and re-recanted, offering a series of contradictory claims to having been raped by 20, five, four, three and two players, before finally settling on three, none of whom she could confidently identify. Her fellow stripper at the party called her story a “crock.”
Nifong didn’t know all this, however, because, incredibly, he never interviewed his “victim” about the facts. Instead, he set out systematically to demonize the accused players, violating pretrial publicity rules while suppressing evidence of their innocence. After the accuser proved unable to identify her assailants during two photo lineups, Nifong told the police to give her a third chance, showing her pictures only of the 46 white lacrosse players without any pictures of “fillers,” or nonsuspects. This violated local, state and federal rules for reliable identification procedures. He refused to drop the charges after no DNA from any of the players was found on the accuser. When the DNA of as many as four other men, none of them Duke students, was found on her, Nifong refused to turn over this crucial exculpatory evidence to the defense. And he refused even to meet with defense lawyers to consider the conclusive “digital alibis” they had assembled from cellphone calls, A.T.M. deposits and time-stamped photos proving their clients could not have committed the crime. In this case, the technologies of the surveillance state served the cause of liberty.
Nifong’s sins are now well known, but Taylor and Johnson argue that he was aided and abetted by the news media and the Duke faculty. They are withering about the “lynch mob mentality” (in the words of a defense lawyer) created by bloviating cable news pundits on the left and the right. But they are also sharply critical of what they call the one-sided reporting of the nation’s leading newspapers, including The New York Times. With a few exceptions, the authors suggest, The Times’s coverage consistently showed a “pro-Nifong bias,” most notably in a front-page article apparently trying to resurrect the case after it seemed on the verge of collapse.
At least “many of the journalists misled by Nifong eventually adjusted their views as evidence of innocence” came to light, the authors conclude. That’s more than can be said for Duke’s “activist professors,” 88 of whom signed an inflammatory letter encouraging a rush to judgment by the student protesters who were plastering the campus with wanted posters of the lacrosse team and waving a banner declaring “Castrate.” Even when confronted with DNA evidence of the players’ innocence, these professors refused to apologize and instead incoherently attacked their critics. In the same spirit, the authors charge, the president of Duke, Richard Brodhead, fired the lacrosse coach, canceled the season and condemned the team members for more than eight months. The pandering Brodhead, in this account, is more concerned about placating faculty ideologues than about understanding the realities of student life on his raunchy campus.
In their final chapters, the authors go further. They believe that Brodhead was trying to avoid the fate of Lawrence Summers, deposed as president of Harvard for his incorrect views about gender equality, and that in the “alternative universe” of academia, no university president can challenge the conceits of political correctness that are corrupting our greatest campuses. Here the book becomes a little hyperbolic and reads more like a blog than like the meticulous narrative that has come before. But if the authors are at times carried away by righteous indignation, they can surely be forgiven in light of the consequences of the abuses they describe. Taylor and Johnson have made a gripping contribution to the literature of the wrongly accused. They remind us of the importance of constitutional checks on prosecutorial abuse. And they emphasize the lesson that Duke callously advised its own students to ignore: if you’re unjustly suspected of any crime, immediately call the best lawyer you can afford.
Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University, is the author, most recently, of “The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America.”
Jeff Rosen, I should note, is one of the nation's leading law professors, and did a remarkable book on technology and privacy.
(I've used the book in constitutional history classes.)
He's generally considered a liberal or center-left, but doubtless we'll hear how he--like Nadine Strossen, Clarence Page, Evan Thomas, etc.--are reactionary rightists.
Maybe the Times used that reviewer for UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT because they realized they might as well bite the bullet. A negative review would have been too transparent. This way at least they score honesty points with the public. (That's the cynical view). But maybe the reviewer honestly feels that praisworthy way about the book. Either way, I'm glad the review is as it is.
Steven Horwitz @ 9:17 writes:
"After all, (sarcasm on) we all know that the NYT couldn't possibly say anything good about KC or bad about the PC types at Duke (sarcasm off).
Nothing more than that - your spy radar over-reacted."
You're right ... it did. Oddly, I'm alive today because of that tendency and it isn't always appropriate, so thank you for the clarification.
One Spook
Boffo NYT review. Wonder if they will lose subscriptions over it?
joe t at 954 and anon at 1008 are examples of the sort of view I was criticizing.
The NYT doesn't pick book reviewers on the basis of how it relates to their news coverage, and NYT readers will not care ONE WHIT that the book got a positive review. Anyone who thinks the NYT readership is comprised of folks who think "something happened" and who will defend the PC agenda no matter the facts live on another planet. I'm also quite sure the NYT newsroom does not believe "something happened" (except perhaps Duff ;) ).
I can't stress this enough: even among most of my left/liberal faculty colleagues, the common view is that the players were railroaded and that the worst one can say is that having a party with strippers and underage drinking was a really bad idea. I just had a conversation with one such person today. I've yet to have a conversation with one of my faculty colleagues who thinks the LAX players were guilty of a crime.
There simply is not a constituency out there for "something happened" (at least outside of Durham :) ) and most NYT readers will find Rosen's review congenial.
"Triers of fact should not have a financial or personal interest in the outcome of a case."
This is certainly quite logical before a case reaches its outcome. However, once a case has reached its outcome, someone who was there in a key role may never afterwards accept any sort of honorarium or speaking fee for telling about what they witnessed from their vantage point because that will somehow retroactively raise questions about bias seems to me to be somewhat paranoid. Consider this case -- is anyone going to take seriously the premise that Lane Williamson's first-hand experience with Mike Nifong's ethics hearings would have been of less interest had they found Nifong guilty on fewer of the charges? Are we seriously going to entertain the scenario that they would have found Nifong guilty on, say, only twenty-six counts rather than twenty-seven, if not for some member of the DHC thinking "Oh, wait! I might potentially get a speaking fee out of this in the future! We should find him guilty on more counts so my fee will be higher!"?
To: Steven Horwitz:
I, for one, have missed you (especially when your sarcasm volume is turned up to 11)! Welcome back. ;)
As a matter of fact, no speaker at this CLE program is receiving any fee, or even expense reimbursement. It should also be noted that Nifong attorney David Freedman is on the panel, as is Calvin Murphy, who was the NC State Bar president when the grievance file on Mr. Nifong was first opened.
I don't know about that, Mr. Horwitz (although I'd like to believe you). I know plenty of elitist people in Manhattan that follow the NY Times' every word. I've heard some unbelievably non-factual things come out of the mouths of supposedly sophisticated Manhattan residents who devoured the Times. (Once even from a guy I just got back from the Metropolitan Opera with!) I'll admit, though- maybe I just attract idiots.
"They remind us of the importance of constitutional checks on prosecutorial abuse. And they emphasize the lesson that Duke callously advised its own students to ignore: if you’re unjustly suspected of any crime, immediately call the best lawyer you can afford."
I liked Rosen's critique, except for this last part.
The book emphasized much more than that; however, those other tidbits Rosen perhaps needed to gloss over.
A good review, nonetheless.
This look to me like another example of a problem in the NC legal system. I personally think it is a BAD idea for the guy who acted a judge and trier of fact in NC Bar v. Nifong to be gaining publicity or income from his decision.
Serving as a panelist on a CLE presentation is certainly not profitable for a practicing attorney. And, as a member of the NC bar, I can think of few better people to educate me about ethics. What Mr. Williamson is doing is a tremendous service to all of us in the bar.
No Brad Bannon? No Joe Cheshire? No Wade Smith? No Professor Coleman?
None of these three lives in or near Charlotte. As for Cheshire and Smith, they have both shared their time and wisdom with the Wake County Bar on numerous CLE events.
Walt in Durham
Always nice to be missed 1042. Been busy with my day job suffice to say.
Did you miss me too Debrah? ;)
Steven Horwitz said...
I can't stress this enough: even among most of my left/liberal faculty colleagues, the common view is that the players were railroaded and that the worst one can say is that having a party with strippers and underage drinking was a really bad idea. I just had a conversation with one such person today. I've yet to have a conversation with one of my faculty colleagues who thinks the LAX players were guilty of a crime.
I can't stress this enough, Prof. Horwitz: Talk is cheap. We know college faculty think they are qualified to pass resolutions on everything from the Patriot Act to the overthrow of Saddam to divestment from companies doing business with Israel (("Yes!", according to a 25-2 vote at Howard University). So, let's see if your colleagues will do more than make you feel like they are "nice guys": See if they will support a faculty resolution that will condemn the Group of 88 -- specifically, not with some mealy-mouthed and general "support for student due process rights".
We'll be waiting to hear how far you can get with that.
RR Hamilton.
KC Johnson wrote: "[Jeff Rosen's] generally considered a liberal or center-left, but doubtless we'll hear how he--like Nadine Strossen, Clarence Page, Evan Thomas, etc.--are reactionary rightists."
Full disclosure; I love this blog; I managed to get a copy of UPI on 9/1 and read it immediately (loved it to).
I'm concerned by the issue that the above statement raises (I know it is said with the typical biting sarcasm that I adore in many of KC's posts and comments). Did I miss something? Who has alleged that Strossen, Page, Thomas etc. are "reactionary rightists" or something less sarcastic? Certainly no legitimate liberal thinker? Perhaps a left-winged loon (I see "liberal" and "left" as two completely and separate identifiers).
I'm becoming increasingly concerned that this case has caused many to focus far too much on political labels. I acknowledge that while KC's liberal credentials are well established, he has been attacked in certain comments here as being "right-wing" and worse for help he received from some admittedly right-of-center groups during his tenure battle and based upon some of the support of the lax players that came from the right. KC's statement, even jokingly, illustrates the odd practice of assigning all encompassing labels based upon one's opinion in this case. Is this case really so polarizing that, in academia, to criticize the lax players is the only means by which to be "accepted" by liberals or by certain programs/departments? Or, is criticizing the Duke faculty and administration a guarantee that an academic will be labeled as "right" or "conservative" or even "racist"? That can't be correct. I'm more inclined to agree with Steven Horwitz that most liberals in academia agree that the players were not only deprived of their due process rights by a corrupt prosecutor but were also abused and used by the Duke faculty and administration. Other than the occasional "troll", are there really any thinkers worth reading that would call Nadine Strossen, Clarence Page, Evan Thomas "reactionary rightists"? Or that really believe that Prof. Johnson is a "right-winged nut" or perhaps a "closet racist" or "anti-woman", etc.?
KC: When are you closing down the blog and leaving for Israel? You realize, of course, that so many of us will really miss this blog and your daily commentary. :(
11:18,
Most leftwingers don't know how leftwing they are. Everyone they know is a leftwinger. They feel pretty moderate.
I mean, I'm a leftwinger in Texas. But I'm not dumb enough not to realize that Texas is the most rightwing large state in the nation. So, I knowI'm not going to be "leftwing" outside of Texas -- except in Utah, Nebraska, Alabama, and the like.
I read recently that a U.S. congressmen holding an informal press conference with more than a dozen D.C. reporters stopped the questions to ask how many of the reporters knew a gay person (2% of the population); every hand went up. Then he asked how many knew an evangelical Christian (25-35% of the population); one or two hands. Many years ago, I read The REAL Anti-Semitism In America by the former president of the ADL. (The book should be required reading for every Jew in America.) Anyway, he said that in the NYC neighborhood of his youth, the "rightwing" were the New Deal Democrats.
If you read the critics of this blog, it's clear that the "rightwing" among most U.S. college faculty starts with Hillary, if not Obama (btw, is that his first or last name? Nevermind, we'll never hear from him again anyway.) At Duke, you had that moron dean who used Mill's remark about "most stupid people being conservatives" to justify the ideological tilt of his faculty -- Somehow he missed the fact that the terms "liberal" and "conservative" mean nearly the reverse of what they meant in Mills' time, 150 years ago, and that polls show that the least educated Americans are most likely to vote for the "liberal" candidates.
RRH
"think they are qualified to pass resolutions on everything"
Well, actually, everyone IS qualified to have an opinion on overything, don't you know. The America thing, you know.
For my part, I'm willing to welcome Nadine Strossen, Clarence Page, Evan Thomas, etc., and even KC Johnson to the set of us "reactionary rightists." We spread a big tent. To quote myself: Tolerance is a conservative virtue.
-- No, not that Glenn
"I'm more inclined to agree with Steven Horwitz that most liberals in academia agree that the players were not only deprived of their due process rights by a corrupt prosecutor but were also abused and used by the Duke faculty and administration." 11:18 PM 9/12
What does it matter what the "liberals" think if they don't speak up? By not speaking up, they allow Leftists to speak for them. Too many liberals are either afraid of Leftists or see them as some sort of ally -- a slightly exaggerated (but harmless) version of themselves.
Many liberals in America have been falling into the mass graves dug by Leftists for decades. They climb out, move along with their eyes shut, and fall into another one.
Leftists are not cute. They are not pets. They are not the friends of liberals. They are totalitarians and murderers -- they start by murdering truth, decency, due process, democratic values, and genuine diversity. And then, and sooner or later, the body count starts to rise.
SAVANT
Inre: NYT
I was at an event last night, where three copies of a book analyzing the NYT coverage of the Civil War was awarded as a door prize.
There were probably seventy people attending. Most attending were sixty years old or older. Some were History professors.
I'm not sure which tickled me more; the host announcing he had made a mistake and erroneously had selected the wrong book (he warned everyone that he could provide no qualification OTHER than it was written by someone from th NYT) or the fact that none of the winners wanted the book.
Though it shouldn't have it surprised me that there was universal mockery of the NYT.
That became a teaching moment as the overt bias of the NYT became a dinner topic. I was then able to introduce the table to KC's book and provide some detail of the hoax.
Everyone was familiar with the case on some level, but none knew the detail. Castigating the NYT and MSM coverage and encouraging the table to learn more, especially if they had grand-children in college, moved me toward self-actualization.
"What's interesting is that the preview link right after the UPI review is one to a discussion about the role of the "canon" in the humanities in light of Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind" turning 20. Seems relevant to the Duke case, I'd say."
Especially the indirect effects of including "american Psycho" in the canon.
"I read recently that a U.S. congressmen holding an informal press conference with more than a dozen D.C. reporters stopped the questions to ask how many of the reporters knew a gay person (2% of the population); every hand went up. Then he asked how many knew an evangelical Christian (25-35% of the population); one or two hands."
Interesting percentages you have there, Hamilton. It would be interesting to know where those percentages come from and how those who provide them define "gay person" and "evangelical Christian".
3:39,
If you dispute the figures, say so and provide your alternate estimates. Otherwise, everything you want to know you can find on the web.
RRH
Steven Horwitz (9/12/07 9:17pm) wrote --
"What I was referring to was that some around here thought the NYT would give it to either a lightweight or a clearly hostile person to review so that they could smash it, supposedly to line up with their biases in the case itself..."
That would be me, in a sarcastic comment written last week (doubtless I had company).
I was wrong.
The NYT played it straight in assigning the review to Rosen, and then editing and publishing what he wrote.
Funnily enough, last night I was describing the NYT's miserable performance in the Hoax/Rape case to one of the right-wingiest people I know. He countered that the Times' news coverage is generally excellent, and much better in terms of factual accuracy and error correction than its competition. Not to mention the Web.
I guess he's got a point.
So, a tip o' the hat to the Times for this one.
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