Wednesday, February 28: Response Day for Nifong. I hear the best defense is a good offense. I can’t wait to find out what he has to say…
Later…In standard “mistakes were made” fashion, Nifong says he didn’t intentionally violate ethics rules. (Response in macromedia - anybody have a PDF copy?)
Even later… Nevermind. PDF copies available here.
Tuesday, February 27 @ 3:20 p.m.: The bloggers are buzzing about a new motion filed in the Duke sexual offense and kidnapping case. We know that DNA lab dud dude Brian Meehan testified that he and Mike Nifong conspired to withhold exculpatory evidence. Among the 1,800 pages of discovery, defense has uncovered more info.
In Addendum to Motion to Compel Discovery; Expert DNA Analysis (PDF) filed today, defense contends that Meehan failed to disclose that DNA found in the accuser’s rectum didn’t match the lacrosse players indicted for the crime or any other male tested. (Pardon me, but yuck) The DNA of at least two males was found inside the accuser, and 11 of the 22 rape kit DNA extractions were from males other than the accused lacrosse players. According to the motion, the defense is still waiting for more data from Meehan’s lab. Defense believes there’s a “statistical likelihood” that the missing information will prove even more exculpatory.
In other words, the accuser was loaded with DNA from men other than the ones she claims raped, sodomized, strangled, and beat her, but Nifong and Meehan didn’t think the defense needed to know all that.
I sure hate it. 
Sources and blogger reactions: KC Johnson, John in Carolina…
Earlier…I’d love to have been a fly on the wall during this conversation. Hopefully, all charges against Finnerty, Seligmann, and Evans soon will be dismissed, and the stripper-accuser will be charged with making a false police report, lying to officials, and whatever else they’ve got…
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The Duke “sexual offense” case saga is still ongoing, with something new happening every day. At most, I blog about the case once every week or two, and even then, only when inspired to write more than a few sentences.
Check out these “Duke bloggers” daily for up-to-the-minute information: The Johnsville News, Durham-in-Wonderland, LieStoppers, Forensics Talk, John in Carolina, and Crystal Mess. (By the way, if you frequently blog about the case, let me know so I can include you among the Duke bloggers.)
Nifong Hits the Circuit
Through no one’s fault but his own, Mike Nifong’s career and reputation are as good as ruined. Not only are his colleagues calling for his head and politicians demanding a federal investigation, appeals court judges are citing him as an example of prosecutorial misconduct in their court rulings. From the Herald Sun:
Internet bloggers and cable television pundits have long attacked Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong over his handling of the Duke lacrosse sex-offense case.
But Nifong only recently came under scrutiny from some of the loftiest legal sectors in the land.
Early this month, he was adversely mentioned in rulings from two out of 12 U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal, with one judge alluding to him as a prosecutor “run amok” because of the felony indictments he obtained from a grand jury last year against three Duke lacrosse players.
First, I’m proud to be among the “Internet bloggers” who “attacked” Nifong over his mishandling of the case. Second, the label “Internet bloggers” is redundant. There is no other kind of blogger than an Internet blogger. Blog is short for weblog, web is short for world wide web, and the world wide web is part of the Internet. To blog, one must use the web, which is part of the Internet. Therefore, being a blogger implies that you use the Internet.
Pardon the pet peeve alert, but I had to get that out.
That judges are citing Nifong in a negative context does not bode well for his career or reputation, to understate the matter. It’s worth noting that he was referenced in a dissenting opinion and footnote of an opinion, but still, the references generated press. In Nifong’s case, I don’t think the old saying, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” holds true.
Unusual Leftist Recommendations
I read on KC Johnson’s blog and in the Duke Chronicle that a group calling itself the Campus Culture Initiative Steering Committee (what? no blacks or feminists chairing the committee?), comprised of professors, administrators, students, and alumni, is set to release a report recommending changes to “improve the undergraduate experience†at Duke.
Before I get to the report, I have a couple of observations to share about CCI’s membership. Former committee member Karla Holloway, a black feminist English professor and Group of 88 member, quit her committees, including CCI, in protest of Duke president Richard Brodhead lifting Reade Seligmann’s and Collin Finnety’s suspensions. History professor Peter Wood already has slandered libeled the lacrosse team. [Wood's words were written, so he libeled the team, though he may have spoken similar remarks publicly.] Why were these two deemed qualified to recommend ways to “improve the undergraduate experience”?
Now, the report. Brodhead proposed several groups last year, prompted by the false gang rape allegations against the lacrosse players, and the committee is one of those groups. (Pictured: Chair Robert Thompson, Vice-Chair Larry Moneta, former member Karla Holloway, and “libeler” Peter Wood)
One of the committee’s recommendations is the usual mandatory, leftist, indoctrination-style race, class, and sex course. Predictable and trite. But two unexpected and unusual recommendations caught my attention.
First, one involves “raising the ‘low end of the admissions standards’ to ensure that all students are prepared and committed to engage actively in the intellectual life of campus.” Obviously, this is a reference to race preferences, the odious policy by which “minorities” with lower grades and test scores are admitted. I wonder why leftists are suddenly concerned about this and what it has to do with the lacrosse “sexual offense” case?
Hopefully, the report will elaborate, but my guess is that black students used the “rape” hoopla to vent frustration about feeling shut out of campus life academically. Ironically, it’s the administration’s fault that minorities have to deal with this. They’re admitted to these schools with lower grades and scores than their white counterparts in the name of skin color diversity, and the administration has little regard for whether they’re academically prepared.
The struggle to keep up with rigorous coursework is stressful in itself, but when you’re made to feel like some white liberal’s pet project and you carry the stigma of having been admitted under a separate and a lower-standards admission track, stress is tenfold. Perhaps Brodhead and the committee finally recognize that admitting students based on race despite academic readiness seriously undermines their campus experience and that raising standards will alleviate some of the alienation and stigma minorities may be feeling. We’ll know for sure (I presume) when the report comes out.
The second unusual-for-leftists recommendation is “discontinuing the practice of assigning housing to selective living groups and social/affinity/interest groups.” What does that mean? Since I don’t know the housing situation at Duke, I have to rely on readers who are. Are certain dorms reserved by race and/or ethnicity? Club affiliation? Athletics? This recommendation is particularly interesting if, in fact, there are dorms specifically for minority students. I’ve heard such things exist, but I don’t know if they exist at Duke.
Additionally, as people of the same race tend to self-segregate, the committee’s recommendation for a “change in the dining services model” must be an attempt to discourage the practice.
Despite the tone of this post, I admit that I’m optimistic about some of the group’s recommendations. Although a mandatory “diversity” course is unnecessary, administrators and faculty need to address the consequences of admitting underqualifed minority students and discourage self-segregation on campus, if the school claims to strive for diversity.
In my experience, when liberal types say they want to have an “honest” dialogue about “race and gender” differences, they don’t want to deal with differences that make minorities and women look bad. The point is to make the majority and men look bad. But if the committee aspires to meet its goal to “improve the undergraduate experience,” its approach must be honest and balanced.
Otherwise, the months spent deliberating and preparing the report will have been wasted, and the report itself useful only for wrapping fish.
Previous posts:
Addendum: Duke’s Group of 88 professors are getting a lesson in the First Amendment. They castigated the lacrosse players based on their own racial prejudices and used them to vent frustration about their own personal issues, and now they’re whining about receiving hate e-mail. Welcome to America, land of free speech! As a recipient of it myself, I know firsthand how unpleasant it can be. But I also recognize that my public expressions have consequences, and hate mail neither shocks nor upsets me.
Update: A Duke student writes (emphases added):
When white Duke lacrosse players were accused of raping a black stripper and student at North Carolina Central University, the “racial left”-those whose worldview is dependent upon that belief that America is a racially oppressive society-unleashed unholy hell.
Protesters swarmed our campus and the city streets, they screamed vulgar condemnations, they tarred the whole team as complicit in a stonewall cover-up, they put up wanted posters, banged pots and pans. They cried out for justice and vengeance, demanded suspensions, expulsions and incarcerations. Worst of all, as they feverishly disregarded due process, they helped create an atmosphere of hysteria and madness which could only serve to embolden an unhinged district attorney who had the power to breathe life into the fantasies of the growing mob.
But when a black man was recently accused of raping a white Duke student at a party hosted by members of a black Duke fraternity, suddenly these great defenders of virtue fell silent.
There have been no protesters, no signs, no one chanting and screaming in front of the house where at least one member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. live demanding they “come forward” with what they know. No one is demanding President Brodhead take action or that we cure a sexist and racist campus culture in response to these accusations. No professors are running ads that convey guilt or claiming, as they did before, to know the alleged crime was racially motivated.
Indeed, and we won’t see anything approaching the reaction to the first case, which I’m convinced had more to do with race and class envy than it did the “rape.” Anyone who can’t see that by now is willfully blind.
