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April 11, 2007
Duke Charges Dropped...With Extreme Prejudice
The Duke three are going free.
Allah's got the video, with numerous updates. Ace also has some good analysis. District Attorney Mike Nifong used this case as a campaign tool, parading these guys in front of television cameras and even going so far as allow the media into the booking room. He pronounced them guilty in interviews, saying there was "no doubt" the woman had been the victim of a sexual assault. He hid evidence that cleared the accused from defense counsel.
Mike Nifong is a thoroughly dishonorable man, and I hope he is disbarred and charged with malicious prosecution. He dragged these guys through the mud to further his political career, and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law he was willing to pervert.
But I hope Duke University also suffers some ill effects. Duke's president, Richard Brodhead, issued a disingenuous statement today in which he said:
From the outset, I have been careful to note that these students were entitled to the presumption of innocence and I looked to the legal system to determine the merit of the charges. Now, finally, that process has given us a decision based on a thorough and objective review of the evidence.I guess he expects us to forget what he wrote last April, when he offered a defense of the presumption of innocence, eleven paragraphs into a statement that included this:
Rape is the substitution of raw power for love, brutality for tenderness, and dehumanization for intimacy. It is also the crudest assertion of inequality, a way to show that the strong are superior to the weak and can rightfully use them as the objects of their pleasure. When reports of racial abuse are added to the mix, the evil is compounded, reviving memories of the systematic racial oppression we had hoped to have left behind us.And this:
In regard to men’s lacrosse, I have announced today that the men’s lacrosse season and all associated activities have been cancelled.Oh, and let's not forget this:
I assure you, however, that the Duke disciplinary system will be brought to bear as soon as this can appropriately be done.Only after all of that (and much more) does he offer a weak-tea statement of support for the players who were accused.
Brodhead was also overly tolerant of the lynch-mob attitude that took root in his faculty, who issued a reprehensible statement about the accused students. Neither he nor his provost did anything to stop the slander of the three lacrosse players.
I hope Duke alumni remember the administration's inaction when they sit down to make their charitable contributions this year, and I hope the students and university community do not allow the professors who were out of line to hide behind "academic freedom" as a way to justify their slander.
Posted by slublog at April 11, 2007 06:26 PM
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Tracked on April 11, 2007 11:27 PM