Friday, February 2: Post is closed to commenting. Resume discussion at the latest post.
(Update: If it wasn’t clear before, it should be clear now: Mike Nifong, disgraced Durham County district attorney, is in serious trouble. Also, in addition to James Waller [pictured with lawyer Barry Scheck], I should have mentioned Cory Maye. A few bloggers on “the right” have covered his case, including The Volokh Conspiracy and libertarian Radley Balko.
Later…Linwood Wilson, Nifong’s investigator, is quite a character. He’s the subject of ethics complaints, too. Some team Nifong had.
A few months back, Wilson publicly challenged a statement made by the defense, and all it did was reveal his own ignorance. He was unfamiliar with the case files, and had the nerve to publicly criticize someone quite familiar with them. What a dope. More blog stuff here.)
Columnist David Hawpe makes a good point in his latest column about the Duke case, “On wrongful prosecutions, the right engages in selective outrage.” He wonders why “the right” isn’t just as vocal or as outraged when blacks are falsely accused of obviously phony crimes. He calls our outrage selective.
Is he correct? Is there a bit of unnatural selection going on?
Before I deal with the substance of the piece, allow me to point out to Mr. Hawpe that his column’s title just as easily could have been, “On wrongful prosecutions, the left engages in selective support and reverence for prosecutors and the police.” But tit-for-tat doesn’t get us very far.
Hawpe succinctly summarizes how we right wing types reacted to the stripper-accuser’s allegations of gang rape by three white men. We saw a woman in trouble with the law fake unconsciousness and cry rape to avoid going to jail for violating probation. We saw a woman, who’s no lady, selfishly use her sex and race as weapons to lash out at white men in resentment and anger. We saw a certain segment of the black community do likewise. Did she or they know her CYA maneuver would result in a nationwide media storm? Who knows, who cares…
So yes, “the right” (and more than a few on the left) called the Duke rape case by its name: BS.
Hawpe points out that men have gone to prison and perhaps even to their deaths for allegations that were just as far-fetched as the stripper-accuser’s, as was the case with James Waller, accused of a heinous crime. Hawpe asks:
Where was the right-wing rage last week when DNA testing showed that James Waller was wrongly convicted of raping a 12-year-old boy in 1982?
Where was the indignation when it proved that the white boy’s description of his black assailant — 5-foot-8 and about 150 pounds, with the lower part of his face covered by a red bandana — didn’t apply to the 6-foot-4, heavyset Waller?
I’ll try to answer Hawpe’s question because I think it’s a fair one. Where was I when Waller and people like him were railroaded? Where was I when others, black and white, were sent to prisons or were killed for crimes they didn’t commit, couldn’t have committed? Read on.
I’ve always been pro-prosecution, even when I was a liberal. Law and order preserved and justice dispensed have been sources of great satisfaction for me. Because I believe those state functions are vital for a safe, well-run, and prosperous nation, I tend to give the state the benefit of the doubt, even though prosecutors are fallible human beings. However, I’d rather they erred on the side of letting a criminal go free than locking up an innocent person.
I typically don’t blog about specific trials and DNA results. I tend to focus on the overview: crime statistics and trends. But for the mainstream media’s (MSM) slanted and blanketed coverage of the Duke case, I probably would not have gotten involved. And let’s get real. What left-leaning journalist wouldn’t incessantly cover a juicy story like the alleged gang rape of a poor black woman, who has to strip to feed her children, by “rich” drunken white frat boys shouting, “Nigger!”?
I must confess that I am biased. Given the disproportionately high rates at which blacks commit crimes, especially violent crimes, I don’t pay much attention. Such stories are too common, and they make me too angry. I don’t feel it’s worth the effort to follow media coverage, research the facts, and find out whether the alleged perpetrators are being railroaded.
I must confess that I tend to focus on what MSM cover because I like criticizing the media. And I was just as intrigued by the race angle as they were, for different reasons. Court cases are going on all over the country every day of every week. It’s sad to say the one that got my attention was so fraught with issues of race and class, but that’s the way it is. When other innocent men, black men, were accused and sent to jail, I didn’t pay much attention. It’s classic dog-bites-man. And the similarities between this case and the Tawana Brawley case, which I noticed immediately, were too rich to ignore.
The risk of ignoring other cases is that innocent people lose their freedom. My confessions are not excuses for my lack of outrage or attention; they merely are reasons, right or wrong.
Readers, instead of ranting and raving about Mike Nifong or the stripper-accuser, let’s do a cold, hard reality check:
1) What was it about the Duke case that fired you up the most?
2) Aside from the Duke case, have you been following other cases in which people have been accused of committing a crime where the allegations are obviously phony, particularly where the accused was black? If so, tell us about those cases.
More Duke case coverage: William Anderson (another must-read), The Johnsville News, Durham-in-Wonderland, LieStoppers, Crystal Mess, John in Carolina…
(AP photo)
